They were on Pluto.
Charon hung in the sky. It always did, taking the same amount of time to orbit Pluto as Pluto did to turn on its axis—about six and a half e-days. Much of Pluto’s surface was covered with grist, and the two men could walk along in a virtual re-creation as if they were two ghosts, traveling across its wasteland. Pluto was mostly ice water in the dark band around the equator, methane at the poles, exotics mixed throughout. Sublimation was constant, and drifts of vapors wafted about. It really was “where the stones go to die,” as Beat Myers had described it five hundred e-years before.
Alas, poor Myers, C thought. I knew him, Horatio.
“We have the planet and the moon,” Amés said. He was beside C, using the icon of the sun. “It was a pushover, really. The Streichhöltzer showed up in the sky, and the locals promptly surrendered. Well, a few radical elements made trouble, but we subverted all the grist on the planet. Imagine—the very land rising up against you and swallowing you up.”
“Not a pretty picture,” C replied.
“You think not?” Amés said. “There was a beauty to it.”
They were instantly in Day, the port city. Gangs of local workers, space-adapted, were unloading transport craft recently descended from the Streichhöltzer. There were barrels and barrels of military grist.
“This will be a supply depot,” Amés said. “For when we strike the Oorts. We can also use it for operations against Neptune.”
“A nasty business that,” said C, and immediately wished he hadn’t. Amés was known, at times, to kill the messenger. But he was merely irritated at the moment by C’s words.
“Yes,” he said. “We’ll get to that later.”
They were in Pluto staff HQ, now inhabiting bodies in the virtuality. Amés elected to allow them to be noticed and General Blanket immediately shunted over to the virtuality to greet them.
“Director Amés,” said Blanket. “This is a surprise.” He was Asian, with jet-black hair worn severely cropped.
But you’ve neglected to give your eyebrows a crew cut, C thought. They were thick and unkempt, and the effect was not pleasing.
“Surprise,” said Amés. “Now tell me about your security arrangements.”
Blanket pretended to look down at a readout on his virtual desk. Amés waited patiently for the man to collect his thoughts. “I’ve released three thousand soldiers into the grist,” he said. “They’ve got the local free converts well in hand. There will be no shield code foul-ups.”
He’s talking about Saturn, thought C, and Haysay’s blunder on Titan.
“Good, good,” said Amés. “Are those soldiers interleaved?”
“Yes, sir. I’ve got a controlling a.i. right here in my headquarters time-sharing between them. Nobody takes a shit without his say-so.”
“And that a.i. would be?”
“Me, sir. One of my converts.”
“Excellent, Blanket.”
“The Streichhöltzer’s in an ellipse around the planet and the moon. I’ve established constant Sciatica patrols. The Slong is sharing the carrier’s orbit at the opposite side. We’re laying mines and establishing a safe harbor for the fleet.”
“Anything else?” said Amés. “What about the local populace?”
“They have graciously volunteered to turn all product sectors to the war effort,” Blanket replied. He smiled, and his eyebrows formed into small arches, like hanging masses of creeper vines.
Amés turned to C. “Suggestions?”
“There’s a woman here I once knew,” said C. “Her name is Shanigan Moth. Best grist hacker I ever met, and I happen to know she’ll sell her services to the highest bidder.”
“Moth, you say—” Blanket again examined his desk readout. He looked up with drooping eyebrows of doom. “She’s, er, dead. Killed in the first wave.”
“I thought you said they surrendered without a fight,” replied C softly.
“They did,” Blanket replied. “But we had already sent in an advance team, so I had them . . . show our stuff a bit. Let the locals understand who they were dealing with.”
I guess you showed them, C thought, but all he said was, “Pity.”
“Is that all?” Amés said to C.
“I’ll give the matter more thought, but for the moment, yes,” said C.
“Director,” Blanket said timidly.
“Yes.”
“We were preparing something for your visit, sir. If we’d had more notice, there would be more ceremony—that is, a better presentation and—”
“What are you talking about, Blanket?”
“The soldiers, sir. They want to give you something—a token of their respect and admiration, as it were.”
Amés frowned at Blanket, and the general seemed to shrink. “A medal?” he said, and sighed.
“Well, er, yes.”
Amés stood, considering. “No,” he finally said. “Get your presentation ceremony in order first.” He gave Blanket one of his wicked smiles. C thought he heard the general give a little gasp. “And make it big,” Amés continued. “Make it the biggest occasion this rock has ever seen. Do a merci broadcast, too. And Blanket—”
“Yes, sir?”
“Not a medal. I want the planet. Give me Pluto on a pendant. Get somebody in Prop to design it.”
Now Blanket was smiling, feeling that he was in on something. Don’t feel that way around Amés, C thought. Don’t ever feel that way. But C remained silent.
“Yes, Director, right away!”
“Good,” said Amés. He looked around at nothing in particular. “It is good.” He motioned to C. “Let’s get on with our trip.”
On Titan, General Haysay was unaccountably having a cold pack applied to his back. It seemed that he had somehow gotten an ache in the virtuality. When C and Amés appeared, he stood up abruptly, upsetting his attendant, who fell upon her butt. C went and helped her to her feet and she and Haysay saluted Amés.
Amés ran Haysay through the general’s security arrangements as he had done with Blanket, and Haysay stammered his way to the end of the questions. During the process, C appeared to be staring at a spot on the floor of Haysay’s virtual office, but what he was actually doing was spreading out through the grist, feeling, seeking . . . there was something. Definitely something.
“I smell free converts,” C abruptly said, totally discombobulating the general.
“That’s impossible, sir,” Haysay said, after gathering himself.
C smiled thinly at him. “The impossible,” he said, “is inconceivable.”
“Director, who is this man?” Haysay had gone from confused to fuming.
Amés chuckled. “He works for us,” he said. “Don’t worry.”
“There are no unaccounted-for free converts in this planet-moon system,” Haysay said, and glared at C. “Whoever he thinks he is.”
“It is merely an opinion,” said C. It was at times like this that he dearly missed smoking.
Amés rounded on Haysay. “I want the grist hereabouts scrubbed from top to bottom,” he said.
“But Director, the resources involved . . .”
“Use them. All of them.” said Amés sharply. “Do it now!”
“Yes, Director.” Haysay remained standing before them. Amés put one of his palms to his forehead.
“General Haysay . . . now!”
Haysay started to attention. “Yes, sir!” he called out to the air. He clicked his heels together and was gone from the virtuality, leaving behind a frightened attendant, who quickly followed.
“What do you mean you ‘smelled’ it?” Amés asked.
“It is,” said C, “a kind of drug they sometimes use. Not a drug, really. A subroutine enhancer called Shelly’s Choice. It operates on a pseudorandom sideband, and anything pseudorandom leaves traces in the grist. Information. I smell information. It is what I do.”
Amés looked at C as if he were some strange creature dredged up from the bottom of an ocean. “You have Uranus well in hand?” he said.
“As long as the Department of Immunity will allow me to run our government there.”
“I will see to it. Let’s go to Jupiter.”
They were among the ships of the blockade.
So this is where most of the DIED navy is, C thought.
“We’ve got them surrounded,” Amés said. There was satisfaction in his voice.
They were five million miles out, existing in grist that had attached itself to the charged particles that clumped at the outer edge of Jupiter’s magnetic field. With their enhanced vision, they had a splendid view of the planet and the moons. All was, indeed, surrounded.
“The merci is partially jammed,” Amés said. “Ganymede is totally cut off. All cloudships are being turned away, and anything else in the sky is being seized and impounded. We own the skies.”
“Why don’t you go ahead and take it, then?” C asked. Again, he wished he could retract his words. Amés didn’t pay him to ask stupid questions. Amés didn’t pay him at all, as a matter of fact, as C had found when he went to rent an apartment on Mercury.
C solved the problem by never sleeping.
“Because, dear C,” Amés replied—that is, the burning sun icon replied, “most of the Federal Army is stationed on those moons. After I kicked them out of the Met, they have scrounged together a living by serving as the security force for the Ganymedean banks and countinghouses. They are an army in name only. What they really are is a paid mercenary force for outer-system robber barons.”
“Of course,” C responded.
“There are a good two million troops down there.”
“A challenge,” said C.
“I’ll starve them,” Amés said. “And then they’ll surrender, or I’ll kill them.”
They were in Zebra 333’s Situation Room aboard the Schwarzes Floß. Zebra 333, a free convert—well, no, he wasn’t exactly that—stood up and took a bow. He had the body of man and the head of a great Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep, complete with underturned horns instead of hair. In the virtuality, you could appear as you wished. And Zebra 333 was always in the virtuality. He lived and breathed it.
C knew that he had an aspect portion that he had put into storage nearly a century ago. Otherwise, Zebra 333 was a LAP who existed entirely in the virtuality. Most LAPs could not do so and retain their top level of acuity indefinitely. Somehow, Zebra 333 was an exception. The one-of-a-kind freak mentality who could thrive as a grossly multiple personality with no biology to keep his megalomania in check. He was, perhaps, Amés’s principal rival in that regard, and C sometimes wondered why the Director kept the LAP around.
“I’ve been expecting you both,” Zebra 333 said. “Welcome.”
“Thank you,” said Amés. C nodded politely.
“We have them cut off,” began the admiral without preamble. “We’ve sent down infiltration grist, with orders to stand by. I’ve worked out a way to alternate the jammer’s positioning so that we get more coverage. At some point during every e-day, everyone gets jammed for at least an hour.”
“Very good,” said Amés. “And the head is very nice this time. Fearsome.”
“Thank you, Director.”
“What about propaganda?”
“We’re hitting them on all fronts. I’ve got some Uranus turncoats doing a merci show especially for Ganymede, telling them all about the wonders of the New Hierarchy. It should be particularly effective there, since Jupiter would, necessarily, be at the top of the proposed caste system.”
“Perhaps,” said Amés. “But not necessarily.”
“We are also proceeding on the calibrations that the Lion of Africa will use—” Zebra 333 broke off his speech and looked at C. The small sheep eyes revealed nothing.
“He is cleared,” Amés said.
“As I was saying,” Zebra 333 continued, “the calibrations the Lion of Africa will use for the earthquake induction on Ganymede and the proposed melting of Europa’s crust.”
“We’re going to hit Ganymede with an earthquake?” C said. This was, indeed, news to him.
“Ganymede has plate tectonics.”
“How convenient,” said C.
“Suggestion?” Amés said to C.
“None. Except for continuing with the eavesdropping measures that I already have in place, and of which, I presume, the admiral is aware—”
Zebra 333 nodded his great head.
“—I don’t see any new points to make. I would like to ask the admiral if modifications have been made to the grist after the subversion successes on Titan.”
“They have.”
“I presumed as much,” replied C evenly. “And measures are in place to detain free converts?”
“I will treat them as I would my own children,” the admiral answered. C knew that Zebra 333 didn’t have any children.
“Well,” said Amés, “fine job, as usual, Admiral. I will leave you to your work.”
They were on a ship a long way from Neptune, hanging in space above the ecliptic. It was the Montserrat.
“Shh,” said Amés. “Let’s listen.”
They were observing Carmen San Filieu’s private quarters, and the admiral was at her meal. She was sharing a paella—a rice-and-seafood dish—with her senior officers: Bruc, Philately, and their adjutants. San Filieu reached over and took a half a tomato, smeared its meat into a slice of bread, then poured a generous amount of olive oil on it.
“What I want,” she said before taking a bite, “is intelligence from the moons.”
“But Admiral,” said Captain Philately. “The merci jamming works both ways. Nothing gets in, but we can’t extract information out.”
“Can’t we find some sideband that the jamming doesn’t affect?”
“Admiral, so long as that jamming apparatus is a black box that we Fleet regulars can’t touch or have a look inside, there is nothing we can do. I have no idea how the technology works, after all—and neither do my technicians.”
“Very well. You have a point, Captain,” said San Filieu. “But there has to be another way. Can’t we get somebody down there? Perhaps disguise them. Have them report back to us electromagnetically?”
“It seems a difficult thing,” Philately answered. “I doubt very much if a drop ship would go undetected, and we know for a fact that they are monitoring the e-m spectrum.”
“Well, all right, I concede the point, but—come, Philately—surely you have some suggestions?”
“None that might stand a chance of succeeding, Admiral,” said Philately. She took a bite of her paella as if to give herself a chance to remain quiet.
“Bruc, what about you?” San Filieu, following Philately’s suggestion, bit into her tomato-soaked bread.
“We’ve got all our remote sensing apparatus trained on them, Admiral,” said Bruc. “That can be very effective.”
“But I want to know what they’re saying. What they’re thinking. Telescopes and the like can’t tell us that.”
“No, ma’am.”
“If they only knew,” Amés said to C, “what we know.”
“Perhaps we should tell them,” C said.
“No,” said Amés. “All in good time. It is a need-to-know technology, and they do not, as yet, have a need to know.”
“Fine, then,” said San Filieu, and shook her head ruefully at her captains. “What progress have we made on the bioplague front?”
“There I have good news to report to you, Admiral, said Philately. “Our analysis of the grist strand shows that it is a very simple construction. Give me another day or so and I’ll have it cracked and reverse-engineered. I could do it faster, but my main grist techs were lost on the Dabna.”
“Then find a consultant on the merci, for God’s sake,” said San Filieu.
“I have done that, Admiral,” Philately replied, a bit woodenly, C thought. “But those aboard my ship, the Dabna, were the best in the fleet in my opinion, ma’am, and they are sorely missed.”
“Yes, yes, but we have to get on with things,” San Filieu said. “Are you going to take that shrimp?”
“No, Admiral.”
“More for me,” San Filieu replied, and reached over and snagged the morsel.
Amés grinned. “San Filieu is a fighter,” he said. “You should see her go at it in New Catalonia.”
“Your daily soap opera?”
“It’s far better than anything on the merci, let me assure you. She destroyed a man the other day without blinking an eye.”
“I’ll take your word for it, Director.”
“Now, suggestions?”
“I’m looking into the situation,” C said. “It is my belief that Thaddeus Kaye is now on Triton. As you know, I believe his apprehension to be crucial to the war effort, Director. Vital.”
“Yes, and I agree with you,” Amés said. “Remember, I had something to do with his creation.”
Yes, C thought. You were passed over for him in the selection process. And there can be only one of his kind made.
This thought, especially, remained unvoiced.
“One other thing,” said C. “Another name keeps popping up. A man named Sherman.”
“He’s the one who wrote me that nasty note?”
“The very one.”
“Look into it,” Amés said. “Let’s go back to Mercury.”
They were in La Mola once again. C stretched out and felt himself in his own body. Well, a body.
Amés got up from his desk and went to the window. He surveyed his domain. “Let us discuss the Met,” he said, his back to C.
“We are bringing the LAPs under your control, shutting them down from the outside in,” said C. “In an e-month, maybe two, you can begin integrating them. The free converts will take a little longer, depending upon the experiments that the DICD are running.”
“I wish you would supervise them,” said Amés. “I could make you.”
“My talents are best applied elsewhere, as you know, Director. I have no desire to become enmeshed in the Department of Immunity bureaucracy, and I find the concentration camp they are running on Mars . . . distasteful.”
“But necessary,” said Amés, still not turning toward C.
“I will not argue the point,” said C.
“How long until there can be full convert integration, both of free converts and convert portions of regular persons?”
“The time line is uncertain. It depends upon what we learn while working with the free converts,” C said. “It may take years.”
“Then the war will have to last for years,” Amés said. “I hope I don’t win too soon.”
“If we can keep the cloudships out of it, your quick triumph may become a problem to you,” said C. His wit seemed to be lost on Amés. Just as well.
Amés put a hand to his window. He held it there for a moment, then drew it away, leaving the print of it on the glass. The big thumbs. The long fingers.
“I want it all, C,” the Director said. “Inside and out.” He sighed. “I have such plans. It’s like a symphony. No one has ever played the human race before. I will do so, and I will make such music as the universe has never heard before. It will be a new creation. Mine.”
Amés’s hand formed into a fist at his side. “I will play them,” he said, “so beautifully.”
The expression on C’s face did not change, but inside, his gut knotted. He had heard such ideas before—perhaps expressed slightly differently, but with the same import. He had heard them from his father, for instance. And all the other tinplate dictators. C thought it best not to remind Amés that he was a composer and not a concert pianist.
“We have, too, the partisan problem,” C said, after a suitable pause.
“How did Operation German Death go?”
“We killed most of Tod’s followers,” C replied. “We did it quickly, but I saw that an appropriate display was made. The time tower escaped, however. The DI sweeper task force was blown to bits shortly after the Friends of Tod were executed, and then another was taken out shortly thereafter. The two incidents are certainly related. The DI is looking into two names I passed along to them. One Aubry Graytor and a Leo Y. Sherman.”
“Any relation to our Triton Sherman?”
“He is the man’s son.”
At that, Amés did turn around. “Really?” he said. “How interesting. What do you suppose it means?”
“I am looking into the matter,” C said. “They are estranged. It may all be a coincidence.”
“That hardly seems likely,” said Amés. “But even if it’s true, we may very well have a use for this Leo Y. Sherman. See that he is captured.”
“I will instruct the Department of Immunity to do so.”
“No,” said Amés. “This is one that I want you on personally.”