Chapter Eighteen

Smith waved the print-out at Schiano. “Is he really this crazy?”

Schiano shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “I didn’t think he was crazy at all, but this isn’t anything I put into the program.”

“So you don’t know if it’s a trick?”

“It isn’t anything I programmed,” Schiano repeated.

He didn’t need to read the print-out; he’d seen the messages himself. They were all over the nets. Posters were all over New York and Philadelphia as well, pasted on walls, utility poles, trashcans, everywhere. Schiano figured that everyone who had ever been involved with PFC at all must have been called in to help put them up.

Smith was probably trying to track down the printer responsible, but that wasn’t likely to work. Schiano doubted a print shop had been involved at all. Anyone could have run off a few thousand posters on his home printer easily enough, and if that was what they’d done then even if Covert was able to identify the make of printer, that wouldn’t tell anyone anything useful. It was probably some model that was common as dirt.

“Are you going to let him hold the rally?” Schiano asked.

“You tell me,” Smith said. “You’re supposed to be the expert on this guy—what’s happening here? Is this some kind of diversion? Or is he really going to show up at this thing and give us a clear shot at him?”

“I don’t know,” Schiano repeated.

“Suppose we clear the streets, cordon off that block, don’t let anyone in—then what?”

“Oh, he won’t show then,” Schiano said confidently. “He’s not stupid.”

“But if we let a crowd form?”

Schiano shrugged. “Maybe he’ll show,” he said. “I just don’t know.”

“Damn,” Smith said. “You aren’t a hell of a lot of good, are you?”

“Hey,” Schiano protested, “this isn’t my job! I’m an imprint programmer, not a goddamned counterspy. I didn’t know I was ever going to have to stop my Spartacus!”

“Yeah, well…” Smith flung the print-out aside. “Let’s just hope your Spartacus is doing something stupid here.” He turned and marched angrily away.

Schiano watched him go, then picked up the print-out. As he had expected, it was one of the notices from the nets.

“Rally!” it said. “If you saw me on the news, here’s your chance to find out what it’s all about.”

It went on for a few lines, and then it gave time and place. Down at the bottom it was signed, “Casper Beech, People For Change.”

What the hell was Beech up to?

Should he warn Beech that Covert knew about the rally?

He shook his head. No, he told himself, that would be putting his own neck in a noose; he didn’t dare try to contact Beech again. Even sending that one message had been incredibly risky. He’d routed it through dummy accounts and six layers of anonymous remailers, done everything he could to keep it from tripping any alarms, but anything in a non-government encryption could be snagged, and any encryption could be broken if someone good wanted to work at it. And he hadn’t dared do anything subtle, for fear Beech wouldn’t be able to read it himself.

And Beech was too smart for this rally to be as stupid as it looked. Beech had to know he’d be exposing himself to Covert’s snipers if he showed up. He must have some sort of plan in mind.

Schiano wished he knew what it was.

Casper leaned against the oily brick and looked at his watch for the hundredth time, more grateful than ever for the illuminated display.

7:58. Almost time. He reached down and picked up the first sheet of heavy, rigid plastic, then looked up. Tiny circles of light showed through the airholes in the manhole cover. That was reassuring; it meant no one had covered it over.

It had been a long, unpleasant wait down here, with his kevlar jacket and his plastic shields, but it was almost over, and the government hadn’t found him.

He leaned the plastic shield against the ladder rungs, then looked down at his vest. Time to put in the ceramic inserts; he’d left them out until now to save weight, but he’d need them in place before he emerged from the manhole.

As he tucked the ceramic plates into the vest pockets he wondered if hiding down here had really been necessary. Then he smiled at his own foolishness; of course it had been necessary. Once those posters had gone up and the messages had gone out over the net, there was no way the feds would ever have let him just walk up to the appointed corner of Washington Square.

They’d let other people come, so as to lure him out, but if he’d shown his face above ground he’d have been dead meat, he knew it.

Just then the manhole cover shifted, with a heavy grating sound; grit sifted down onto his hair. Casper looked up as he smoothed down the last Velcro fastener on his vest; he stepped back further into the shadows and waited, just in case the feds had caught on.

“Cas? Are you okay?”

It was Mirim’s voice.

“I’m fine,” he said. “Get it open and clear.”

“I’m trying,” she replied. “Listen, there are police all over the place—we had one guy tell us we didn’t have a permit, but they haven’t really tried to get rid of us.”

The manhole cover slid aside, and light poured in; Casper blinked as his eyes adjusted.

“I expected that,” he said. “What about the rooftops? See anything?”

“We aren’t sure.” Casper could see Mirim now, as a shadow blocking part of the light. He could see others around the manhole, as well.

“Is the sound system set up?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Good. Here.” He handed up the first of the bulletproof plastic panels. Someone grabbed it and lifted it away, and Casper handed up the next, and the next.

When he finally climbed the ladder out of the manhole he emerged into a booth of clear plastic shielding, each panel held by a trusted member of PFC. Each of them wore a helmet and heavy vest—lined, Casper knew, with kevlar and with ceramic shock absorbers like his own.

Together, the little clump of revolutionaries moved across the street to the sidewalk and up onto the platform set up there for Casper’s use. Once he was on the platform someone handed him a microphone, passing it between two of the plastic panels.

Then the people holding the panels all sank down, sitting on the platform, ducked down low, and Casper looked out at the crowd.

The street was packed—as he had hoped. Most of them were just curiosity seekers, of course, but there might be several potential recruits, all the same.

Police were scattered around, as well. That was to be expected. There were also reporters, and a dozen or more videocameras. That was excellent. Casper wanted this as public as possible.

And somewhere out there, he was sure, there were assassins in the pay of the Covert Operations Group.

“Hello, New York!” Casper called into the microphone. “My fellow Americans, thanks for coming!”

A cheer went up.

“I’m Casper Beech, a member of People For Change, and I have a few things I want to tell you tonight—a few things about People For Change, a few things about our present government, and a few things about you!”

Another cheer. Casper heard it, but didn’t pay much attention. He was listening for other things, and scanning the surrounding buildings.

“Our government has told you that I’m a terrorist, and that People For Change is an organization of terrorists, and I’ve come here tonight to tell you not to listen to their lies! People For Change is a peaceful political organization—we want change, all right, but we’re Americans, and we believe in democracy, and in the Constitution that made this country great. We want to bring about change through the ballot box, not through terror or crime in the streets!

“And that’s what scares the Republicrats!”

And the shot came.

The timing couldn’t have been better if Casper had scripted it himself.

The shot itself wasn’t loud. Casper wasn’t even sure he’d really heard it. Its effect, though, was unmistakable. The bulletproof plastic to his right shattered spectacularly, and shards sprayed around him.

He immediately dropped and rolled, pushing aside some of his supporters. The others dropped their own shields and dove from the platform. People were screaming.

Casper still had the microphone as he clambered back down to the sidewalk.

“That’s what scares them!” Casper shouted. “People, they’ve been fixing the elections for decades! Who oversees the elections? The Republicrats! Why haven’t any of the other parties ever gotten a foothold, no matter how unhappy the voters were? Why has the Dem-Rep Party dominated this country for…”

He’d gotten that far when someone tripped over a wire and disconnected him; there was a burst of white noise, and the sound system went dead.

And then an automatic weapon somewhere opened fire. There were more screams.

The rally collapsed into chaos, and the police started moving in, moving toward Casper; he saw them coming, and shouted, “Look! They can’t let me speak the truth! They’ve sent the police to stop me before I can tell you any more!”

“Stop them!” someone else shouted, and a moment later a wave of angry citizens overwhelmed the police.

Casper didn’t even look back. “Head for the subway,” he said.

Police ran past them, paying them no attention as they rushed to deal with the riot the rally had become.

Moments later, Casper, Colby, Ed, and Mirim dropped, exhausted, onto adjoining seats on an uptown train. For a few seconds they sat silently, catching their breath; then Mirim sat up abruptly.

“I thought that plastic shielding was bulletproof!” she said angrily.

“They must have used armor-piercing shells,” Casper said wearily. “I thought they might. That was why I got to talk as long as I did—they had to change their ammunition.” He turned to Colby. “Where’d you tell Rose to meet us?”

“Canal Street.”

“We’ll need to switch trains, then—we’re headed the other direction.”

“Cas, you could have been killed!” Mirim said.

Casper shrugged. “I figured the plastic would divert the first shot, and I didn’t intend to hang around for a second one—but yeah, we’re in this for keeps, Mirim.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re going to keep on looking for me, Mirim, and they’re going to keep going until they kill me, because they consider me a threat.”

“Because they think you’re going to try to take over the country.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, why don’t you just get out of the country, then? Then you wouldn’t be a threat any more! Colby could arrange it—couldn’t you, Colby?”

“Maybe,” Colby said noncommittally. “Ed might know more than I do on this one.”

Ed grunted.

“But remember Trotsky,” Casper said. “Stalin’s men got him in Mexico, halfway around the world. I’d still be a threat. Besides, Mirim, I’m an American—I don’t want to leave, and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in hiding, with the Covert Operations Group looking for me. So I’m taking some risks to avoid it.”

Mirim stared at him. “You’re ‘taking some risks’,” she said.

“That’s right.”

“Casper, you spent thirty-six hours down a manhole waiting, so that you could stick your head up and get shot at?”

He shrugged.

“I can understand the thirty-six hours—back at Data Tracers you were always good at enduring crap, and that apartment you lived in, well, I guess you could put up with anything. But deliberately letting them shoot at you—I can’t believe you did that!”

Casper looked at her with interest.

“You think the file’s responsible?” he asked. He had to admit, thinking about it, that it did seem unlike anything he had ever done before his optimization.

“Of course it is! Casper, it’s going to get you killed!”

“It hasn’t yet—hell, it’s saved my life.”

“But the risks you’re taking—sooner or later, the odds are going to catch up with you.”

Casper gazed at Mirim for a moment, then glanced at Colby and Ed.

Ed shrugged. “You don’t meet a lot of old revolutionaries,” he said. He clearly wasn’t bothered by this observation.

Casper leaned back, his head against the window behind him, staring at the off-white metal ceiling as the car swayed.

“Spartacus died,” he said, to no one in particular. He frowned, and chewed on his lower lip. “I don’t want to die,” he added a moment later, as the train began to slow for the next stop.

“Well, if you keep up like this, you’re going to,” Mirim said angrily, reaching for the pole to pull herself upright.

Colby leaned across the space where she had been and said, “So you made your speech and they took a shot at you—now what?”

“Now we’ve got our Boston Massacre, our Kent State,” Casper said, standing. “There’s still a way they could get out of it—but I don’t think they’ll do it in time.”

Mirim stared at him. “You mean you took that risk, and whatever you were doing might not work?”

“Oh, I think it will,” Casper said, pushing her toward the open door, as Ed and Colby hurriedly rose and followed. “The only way they can get out of it is if they turn in the shooter and say he’s one of us, that we set the whole thing up. Then it’ll be our word against theirs, and they’ll be able to manufacture all the evidence they need. If they don’t do that, and quickly, we’ll be able to make the truth stick—that the feds shot at me. That’ll get us a lot of sympathy, and a lot of attention, and when we put out a call for volunteers we should get them. Then we turn PFC into a genuine political party, and we make sure that they can’t rig the elections against us the way they have against everyone else.”

“And then what?” Colby said, as the four of them emerged onto the platform. “You get elected president next year?”

Casper shook his head. “Not hardly,” he said. “We won’t be able to take the presidency for at least twelve years, at the very best—probably twenty, maybe as long as forty-four. But if it’s that long, it’ll be because they’ve cleaned up their act, and that’s what I really want.”

“You intend to be elected president?” Mirim asked.

“Probably not me,” Casper said. “Too much political baggage. I did kill those men back in Philadelphia. But someone from PFC. And I’ll be rehabilitated along the way.”

“If you don’t get killed first.”

“If I don’t get killed first,” Casper agreed.