Gabriel's Stand (18 page)

When the old frying pan seemed ready, Gabriel opened the cooler and pulled out his last trout, plopping the headless fish onto the seasoned surface. He replaced the cast iron cover with his stick and poured himself black coffee.

The sun boiled above the chilly desert horizon—where it struck the sage, a faint mist rose from the invisible dew. While the trout hissed softly in the fire, Gabriel folded up the camera tripod and rolled the cable into a coil.

Webcast number one
, he thought. Both parts fit neatly into the satellite transmitter case. Gabriel snapped shut the lock and looked across at his horse. The appaloosa stallion was engrossed with trying to reach a tiny spot of grass just outside the tether
.

I missed last Memorial Day,
he thought suddenly
. Snowfeather should have been there
. A familiar pang of worry stabbed at him, but Gabriel noticed his trout was burning.

——

When he broke camp an hour later, his thoughts returned to his wife and daughter. Snowfeather was as opinionated and beautiful as her mother, and as stubborn and eloquent as her father. He remembered how she looked that night on television, those long months earlier, when he and Alice sat together, watching with a mixture of pride and horror. The Treaty ratification still hung in the balance and—partly because of their daughter's charisma and eloquence—disaster loomed. The image of Snowfeather, standing on a police car, held millions of viewers in thrall on behalf of a cause her parents shared, while she innocently served an agenda dangerous to the whole human race. Snowfeather was riding high, topping the crest of a wave that would drown a whole country. The television image was still vivid in his mind. “Chief Seattle must be weeping because now I learn that a poison more terrible than anything nature can produce is killing the ocean, the cradle of all life…”

Alice said it. “In her place, you would have done exactly the same, Gabriel.”
Alice was always the wiser one in this marriage
, he thought.
And now I need my daughter's eloquence. But what would Chief Seattle say about the new poison, aimed at humanity itself?

A second image was equally vivid in Gabriel's mind. It was just nine days after the demonstrations, so swift was the popular will heeded.

President Chandler was speaking in the Rose Garden—his defining moment. “Today, with the ratification of the Earth Restoration Treaty, we usher in a new era of technological responsibility. Hereafter, this Earth Day will be known as Earth Treaty Day.” As Chandler signed the proclamation and implementing legislation, the cameras pulled back. And there was their daughter, Snowfeather, standing and smiling—right behind the President of the United States.

Gabriel and Alice had not seen their daughter since that April 22 telecast – it seemed an age ago.
History is littered with the casualties of good causes taken too far,
he thought.
God help me if…

Don't go there
, he told himself.
Snowfeather is a survivor…

——

As Gabriel's horse plodded up the gravel road to his trailer, he wondered if he would be fighting a lone battle in this. Last week a long delayed encrypted message from a furtive and very worried Senator Thurston Smith had reached him with the news that John Owen is a fugitive, but safe…somewhere.

Not a word from Owen. Now even Smith has gone dark,
Gabriel mused
. And nothing from Snowfeather. I suppose Fred is being extraordinarily careful with her. At least Alice is safe among trusted friends. Safe for now and crazy with worry…

Inside the trailer, the message light blinked on Gabriel's encrypted satellite phone with mindless urgency.

No one ever calls me here.
Gabriel tossed his gloves on the counter, typed in a code. It was a recorded call.

“Excuse the intrusion, Senator. This is Arnold Winger. I know how you value your privacy. Senator Smith gave me your secret number and asked me to call you right away. I will be standing by at the following number. This is something you need to know.”

Gabriel scrawled the number on a scrap of paper. Shedding his jacket, he entered the number with one arm still in the sleeve. The answer was immediate. “Arnold Winger.”

“This is Gabriel. You called.”

“Thank God. I was afraid you wouldn't get to me before I had to leave town. It's been crazy here with all the staff changes, the transition. Thank you, Senator. I was the chief counsel for the Smith Committee on domestic terrorism.”

“I remember you, Arnold.”

“Good. Then you know about all the staff changes after Senator Smith left.”

“Yes. Where is Thur now?”

“Utah. He's taken a teaching position in Salt Lake City. I know he'll want to get together with you as soon as he is settled. But let me get to the point. You know the Committee had excellent police contacts in Seattle.”

“Yes.” Gabriel's stomach tightened.

“Last night, it seems they finally identified parts of a body…”

——

That same night, Gabriel joined seventy five million viewers who watched the following infomercial, one of fifteen that had aired recently.

The piece opens with an aerial shot of Seattle, zooming to an archive shot of the Edge Medical Labs building. There is a steady drumbeat in the background.

A voice-over: “At this site, some of the most advanced genetic experiments in the world were conducted.”

The picture zooms to a window, showing man in lab coat.

An announcer's voice intones, “Experiments like this.”

The screen is filled with laboratory rats. Then a close up appears of a rat with electrodes in its head.

“And this.” A new frame shows a severed human arm, attached to tubes and wires.

The drumbeat swells and a new picture flickers—a human eye is rolling in a stainless steel tray.

The announcer says, “That operation was closed down thanks to the Technology Licensing Commission.” The screen fades to black. After a beat, there are the sounds of birds chirping and a meadow scene materializes. Patriotic music swells.

A female announcer speaks: “Your Commission. Fighting the special interests. For you. For Mother Earth. For Gaia.”

The full screen Gaia logo grows in size and brightness, superimposed on the meadow.

The screen fades to green…

Several months later, Seattle

Louise had managed to secure a covert line of funding from the Baron in Germany to inaugurate Stage Two of her plan.
Fowler and Longworthy will not be in this loop
, she thought.
As of now, the American G-A-N
is
mine and mine alone
. For today's occasion, Louise Berker had shed all her cult trappings. She was dressed in a crisp gray suit, riding the now familiar elevator down from the subterranean parking lot to the secure site of the Gaia Operations Directorate or G-O-D, carrying her own SmartPage under her arm, concealing the illegal technology in a tiny mailing tube.

As the elevator whisked her one hundred feet below the garage, Berker mused how easily her movement had exploited the blind enthusiasm of the technician classes. She had many models from the last century. The amoral devotion to science and technical mastery of the technicians had been tapped skillfully by Nazis, the Soviets and the Chinese.

It turned out that even physicians could be enlisted in the cause of death, if the research were interesting enough.

Of course Berker knew that the technological game eventually had to draw to an end. All her tech-people would ultimately be put down along with the rest of the planet's excess baggage.
But the day when even the G-A-N can fully shed the disease of technology is a couple of years in the future
, Berker mused. It was an eternity as far as the technicians were concerned.
Let those fools think we will let them live forever
, she thought.

There was the entire American political system to destroy in the meantime.

To the uninitiated, the G-A-N was a loose collection of semi-autonomous cells, eco-terror groups known to Berker but not necessarily to each other. At the apex, however, Berker exercised control and dispersed funding and support via G-O-D.

The Directorate consisted of three sections: Planning, Technology Resources, and Operations. This evening was a strategy review. It would be attended by only three others, the heads each of the three sections: Planning's Chief Guru, Technology's LONER, and Operations' Alpha Dog. Berker chose to think of each of them by titles, their original names having long ago been suppressed.

The three section heads of the Network always met in the same secure area in the sub-basement of the Fowler Building in Seattle—G-O-D's Basement. As far as Fowler and Longworthy were concerned, this bloody little operation was to be a regrettable necessity and they were to be protected by plausible deniability. From Berker's perspective these men were among the expendable useful idiots, still necessary at this phase, but ultimately disposable.

——

The members of Berker's team were waiting for her in the same windowless bunker she had used for all the early meetings with her own personal group, starting with the failed kidnapping of John Owen. Now all the furnishings were complete, including hardwood tables, comfortable chairs, and well-appointed bathrooms. At the end of the room, the high tech communications console had been fully deployed. It gave Berker encrypted access to all the G-A-N's worldwide resources, centers, and operatives.

Berker took her usual seat at the end of the large table, unfolded her computer, and smiled benignly. “Let's have your summary of progress to date and recommendations please,” she said.

“We continue to be very cautious about avoiding the premature dismantling of the communications infrastructure,” Chief Guru said. He was a slightly overweight man with Asian features, vaguely resembling Mao Tse Tung.

“Of course,” Berker said. “First we need to acquire and consolidate control over the general population. More or less willing media cooperation is essential. They must be anesthetized, not aroused. We let Longworthy do his magic for a while. Ongoing propaganda requires control of communications, but not their elimination.”

“Elimination is a later Stage action, of course,” Guru said.

Berker nodded and turned to the man called LONER. His report was to be this afternoon's centerpiece.

“How do you plan the implementation of the Commission's latest order?”

“You mean the Silicon Valley cable cutting.” LONER was a hawk-faced young man in tee shirt and jeans. A dented metal briefcase rested on his lap. “We're using local help. The television news feeds we need will not be affected. Of course our own encrypted backbone is undisturbed. After this Stage, the general population in the area will be forced to rely on SatCom or land-line telephones for the net. We will make sure that their service will be intermittent. And, of course, some of the businesses in the Valley will be driven into bankruptcy.” LONER made this last observation with a certain satisfaction. He had been discharged from one of those businesses before starting work for the G-A-N.

“Why not a Stage Three confiscation operation?” The question was from Alpha Dog. “Then Longworthy's people could seize the SatComs, too. It could be a pilot project for us.” The Head of Operations was an emaciated, bald woman dressed in black. She smiled, revealing a perfect set of teeth.

“It could be that,” Berker said. “But we need to stick to our schedule and the overall plan. The retirement of the other technical means of political control—communication, transportation, weapons, and so on—must be carefully staged.”

“We need to fully disarm our opponents before we discard the high tech advantage,” Guru said. “And we need to avoid arousing the general public prematurely.”

Berker nodded. “Exactly. Now, let's go over the final staging.”

LONER continued, “Land lines and cables can be cut pretty much at will. The satellite communication corridors will be more of a problem. Of course, over time, the satellites will wither and die. This year alone, three satellites went down without replacement. So we are gradually winning the battle by attrition. But as part of the Stage Three seizures, all the wireless portable com-links, especially the SatCom uplink devices used by the general public will be captured and destroyed. Our goal is to achieve at least ninety-nine percent removal from service.”

“Nothing is perfect,” Berker said.

“Obviously,” LONER smirked. “The best seizure coverage leaves holes, of course, as the law enforcement experience with narcotics has proven. So we will keep wireless technology for ourselves linked to an encrypted backbone, while the general public is left relying on the handful of remaining T1 lines and the old phone lines.”

“Which we can sever at will.”

“Yes.”

“All under our control,” Berker said. “Except for that satellite supported wireless net.”

“Yes,” LONER said, “the last one percent.”

“Tell us more about the holdouts.” Berker had asked the question for the benefit of the others.

“Ah, Stage Four?”

“Yes. Did you bring your sample weapon?” Berker asked.

LONER smiled and slipped into his briefcase. His hand emerged clutching a gray, bullet-shaped cylinder, about the size of a baseball, which he carefully placed on the table. “Not armed,” he said.

“Tell them about your toy,” Berker directed.

“This is a screamer,” LONER said. His eyes glinted with the amoral satisfaction of someone who had just killed his boss in a video game simulation. “This is a multi-band self-powered jamming device, very much like an EMP bomb. It has an effective eighty percent kill range of about ten kilometers. At short range—in this room for example—all chips are actually fried. Farther away, some hardened chips would survive, but they are all in military hands at present. Very few SatCom devices will be still working within 500 meters of the detonation point. And we already have dozens of these.”

Berker nodded with satisfaction.

“A miracle of miniaturization. Are you in production?” Guru asked.

“Soon. We'll have a thousand in a few months.”

“And that will take care of the last one percent of the rogue wireless devices.” Berker said this with a quiet note of satisfaction.

“Can we shield our own devices?” Alpha Dog asked.

“Yes, as long as we know when the screamers are to be detonated in each area.”

“The overall plan is sound,” Berker said.

“That's because it is simple,” LONER said. “Jamming, frying and seizure. And Stage Four will be messier, but equally straightforward—an open and comprehensive crackdown on all wireless. At that Stage we expect to have the technology to jam wireless communications over large geographic areas one at a time or all at once. We will also have the capacity to detonate EM pulses that will fry all unprotected chips, circuits, processors and electromagnetic memory within very large areas.”

“What are the loose ends?” Alpha Dog asked.

“Current optical technology cannot taken out by EMP. Se we will need to go after all the fiber op cables, processors and transducers with business invasions, house-to-house seizures and hole digging.”

“So there it is,” Berker said. “Our staging strategies are critical because we don't want premature opposition. And because we need time to develop our own capabilities.”

Guru nodded. “In the meantime, we pit one group against another, rewarding those willing to become our allies.”

“We continue to cultivate useful idiots and intimidated followers. Longworthy is doing fairly well with that,” Berker said. “Even as he, himself, occupies the first category.” Berker rubbed her hands together. Now, let's talk about medical technology.”

“Yes, yes,” Alpha Dog said. “That is open to immediate retirement. The coming pandemics will distract and weaken the resistant authorities, greatly thin the general population, and generally accelerate the process of achieving control.”

LONER suddenly looked troubled.

“Are you concerned about this part?” Berker asked him gently.

“Not exactly,” he said. “I was just thinking about…staying useful to the cause.”

“Oh,” Berker said. “You are concerned about the ultimate rollback.”

“I just want to remain useful.”

“Not to worry. There will be much for you to do for a very long time…much challenging and valuable work, a lifetime's worth, really. You will be protected, of course. I promise. Only someone of your talent can accomplish the phasing.”

An hour later, Berker rode the elevator alone with the head of Operations. “I want you to keep an eye on our all technical people.”

“You are worried about LONER's loyalty?” Alpha Dog asked.

“Not him in particular. But all technical people are flighty and have tendencies to act independently. Just watch for signs, will you?”

“Of course,” Alpha Dog said. “Of course. What about Dr. Owen?”

“You mean eliminating him?”

“Yes.”

“We are having difficulty tracking his location at the moment. So he is a low priority. Eventually, I may ask you for logistical support, but I actually have in-house talent for this, when it comes to his elimination.”

“The Sister who likes killing men?”

Berker just smiled.