The Dead Slam: A Tale of Benevolent Assasination (13 page)

* * *

M
acIan had yet
to grasp what the Massive was, but Cassandra was beaming with insight. The slippery abstraction of social games was starting to gain some traction for her. “And what do men who have power fear most?” she asked, tilting the screen up for MacIan’s sake.

Tuke maneuvered into better focus. “The corporate elite fear exposure. Their game is all illusion. A show. Bread and Circuses. They fear we will discover their unbridled greed is our common enemy. Nothing eliminates those things that separate us faster than a common enemy.”

“What should we do?” said Cassandra. “It’s all politics.”

“Let’s remove the politician from politics. Represent ourselves. We can solve problems our representatives cannot, or will not, on our own.” Tuke’s eyelids were getting heavy.

MacIan could see that Cassandra was on the verge of understanding. “How does the Massive play into that?” she said.

“The Massive is an infinite checkerboard that’s evolved into a swirling hive-mind of interweaving feedback loops from hundreds, then thousands, then millions of players. The Massive sorts, tracks, weighs and collates without prejudice as only a machine can. It’s just a machine. A tool. It doesn’t care what you think, or believe.

“The Massive is common property. Open source. Free. Unencumbered by government or business. The adopted child of a hundred million very protective, very savvy parents. They are the next society, the Engagement Society. Only the truly engaged, the truly interested, can move the Massive. Governance is the ultimate social engagement.”

MacIan, who was not particularly political, needed a motive for what was stacking up to be far more serious an adventure than he’d imagined. “So what’s the problem? Why don’t you just fix the mess they’ve made?”

Tuke looked at MacIan with tired eyes. “They don’t think, they defer to ideology and try to keep things just as they are. But they do react most violently to anything that threatens their advantage. That advantage represents the stored productivity of all human endeavor to date.”

Tuke smiled boyishly, knowing they’d never get that. “Just remember, The Massive is continuously self-calibrating and self-correccc . . .”

Ringgg!

Everyone jumped as the phone rang and Levi’s image went black.

Cassandra snapped the handset to her ear, “NationalPoliceBarracksBeddd—”

A booming voice cut her off. “Help, please help.”

MacIan heard a familiar voice.

Cassandra hit the speaker button.

“This is Pastor Scott, up in Lily. They shot Gina. My wife. Gina!”

Cassandra darkened.

Commander Konopasek looked clueless, but concerned.

“The black-hearted bastards they, they . . . shot her!”

MacIan yelled, “What bastards?”

“Those Irish bastards. Them fuckin’ Black Hearts. She’s bleeding to death. Hurry!”

Cassandra leapt to her feet and pointed at Commander Konopasek. “Call Otis,” she said. “Someone’s on the way, Pastor. Hang tight.” She ran towards her work station, then stopped suddenly and turned to Commander Konopasek. “You know what all that Massive stuff means, don’t you?”

Commander Konopasek gave her a ponderous grin. “What . . . what means?”

She nearly screamed. “This whole damn thing! The Tuke Massive. What did he say it was? ‘Continuously self-calibrating and self-correcting.’ It’s a feedback loop. Don’t you know what that means?”

Konopasek’s face screwed into a simmering question mark. “Why don’t you just tell me?”

“It’s automated!” she shouted.

“What’s automated!?”

“The whole damn thing! It’s a fully automated government.”

* * *

P
astor Scott ran
from The Church with a stack of blankets as the townsfolk formed a circle around Gina, who was lying on the snow in a puddle of blood, writhing in pain. “Six of them!” he bellowed. “The bastards! Six of them! They had to shoot an old lady!? Fucking bastards.”

The crowd muttered their contempt.

Gina hovered on the edge of consciousness, eyes rolling in wide arcs.

Max calmed the crowd as Fred stretched Gina out on the blankets, checked the half dozen bullet wounds mostly in her legs and made a tourniquet of two bungee-cords that had been holding up his pants. “How long has she been like this?” he asked, cool and professional.

“Couple minutes,” said Pastor Scott darkly.

“Keep this leg elevated,” instructed Fred. A woman from the crowd knelt down, raised Gina’s foot and rested it on her hip. Gina gurgled a smile at her.

“He’s on his way,” said Pastor Scott.

Max knelt next to Gina and made a pillow of his massive fur hat. “He’s on his way. Don’t give up.” The tears in his eyes moved to his voice. “Don’t give up now.”

Gina tried to smile, but her eyes were floating in their sockets. Fred lifted her shoulder and put pressure on her clavicle with his thumb. It looked to Max as though Fred knew what he was doing. He wasn’t surprised.

The whirling sound of the Peregrine approached at lightning speed. This time MacIan landed with all haste. The crowd opened a path to where Gina lay. Otis knelt next to Fred.

Fred looked at Otis, realized he’d been brought by MacIan, and sighed with great relief. “Deep shock; small caliber wounds; possible major organ damage; severe blood loss . . .”

Otis peeled back Gina’s eyelids and gestured to MacIan. “We gotta go. NOW!”

MacIan shouted, “Triage.” The ambulatory shelf slid from beneath the Peregrine. “Max! The stretcher.”

Max grabbed the canvas stretcher.

Otis prepared Gina for travel with a quick upper torso wrap in his homemade bandages. “She’s iffy at best,” Otis whispered to Fred.

Fred put his hand on Otis’s shoulder. “Good bandages.”

Otis pointed to MacIan, then to the stretcher Max was unfurling next to Gina. “OK. We’re out of here.” All four lifted her gently onto the stretcher. MacIan took one end, Max the other. “Otis, you’re in back. I’ll open the floor so you can keep an eye on her.”

They slid her onto the ambulatory shelf. She was fading in and out of consciousness, but terrified of being stuffed into a small dark space. She started to quake. “Wait,” said MacIan. He reached into the back and slid one side of the floor under the other. Gina’s panic stopped once she saw Otis reaching down to her from the back seat.

But now an awkward silence arced between Fred and Max; one seat, two men. They turned to MacIan for a ruling.

He said, “We got Otis for medical, so . . .”

Both father and son pinched their faces into identical frowns.

“Which one of you would be worth a shit in a fight?”

Fred stepped forward. Max grabbed him in a bear hug and shoved him away. “Your fighting days are over.” He jumped into the shotgun seat.

Fred rushed the Peregrine and they grappled and slapped hands. “Get your ass out of there, right now.” But the dome lowered, forcing Fred to step back. He banged on the glass. “Now! You hear me? Now!”

“I’ll be fine, Old Man.” Max wore the swaggering grin of farewell used to calm fathers for thousands of years.

Fred watched the Peregrine lift off. His heart sank. “When you get back I’m going to kick your ass, you little bastard.”

Max could not be heard, so he did a familiar, and until this moment, funny pantomime.

“I’M - YOUR - SON.”

E
fryn Boyne’s
shiny black transporter rolled toward Pittsburgh. These long rides were welcome occasions to nap and ponder the intentions of his despised benefactors in New York. A generation ago, he’d done them a major favor. He’d snipped Pittsburgh off at the Point, where the Monongahela meets the Allegheny to form the Ohio River. He’d erected a ten-mile wall across the city’s eastern suburbs, from river to river, creating an impenetrable security triangle, two rivers and one wall — as many a fine limerick began. He saw himself as the Wall’s founding father, and knew full well the Pittsburgh story and the part the Point played in it. But that was all just history now. The only thing that mattered to him now was the community he’d establish in the chaos, New Hibernia. But what lay ahead for his one-street nation was a troubling mystery.

When America declared an end to all taxes, the expat corporations Efryn Boyne was cozy with abandoned Ireland. He’d called in a few favors and landed the mission to replace the local workers, who pretended to build the Wall by day, then knocked it down by night. Efryn Boyne put an end to that by dragooning every hooligan he could scrape off the streets of a bankrupt Dublin.

The cost of this Irish militia was a small price for the corporate state to pay compared to the replacement cost of a working city with lots of smart people. It was all in the numbers and a wall penciled out nicely. And having a standing militia seemed like a good thing in many a boardroom — at the time. A corporate militia was hard to argue against in a world where hundreds of thousands of indignant war veterans were looking for justice. The Irish militia was a bargain and had potential value in the future. The veterans’ future had already been squandered.

It was nearly midnight in Pittsburgh as his transporter headed downtown on 5th Avenue, passing through dozens of campuses along the 5th Avenue Brain Trust.

The principal player in the Brain Trust was Carnegie Mellon University, CMU, the consolidated interest of industrialist Andrew Carnegie (Scot) and banker Andrew Mellon (Scots-Irish). CMU had a very staid and well-preserved campus that spread down 5
^th
Avenue and onto the more lively campus of the University of Pittsburgh. In time, new schools had crowded out the surrounding slums, creating a three-mile academic corridor and high-rent district running from the main gate at Carnegie Mellon straight down 5th Avenue to the Point — where there stood a beautiful fountain that didn’t work.

Boyne smiled out the window at all the new buildings and watched his reflection rippling in the chrome and glass windows of tech schools and think-tanks and lobbying groups. He couldn’t remember any of their names, but he felt dead certain this was where the future was being laid out. Whatever it might be.

“It’s a Golden Age, like ancient Greece must’ve been,” he said, poking his face out of his half-open window, cold wind whistling through his thick gray eyebrows.

The Driver caught Boyne’s attention in the outside mirror. “A safe place for them what deserves it.” The crew mumbled their assent.

Boyne’s seat glided effortlessly between several monitors mounted on two opposing stainless steel work-tops with smoothly rolled edges. The command center accommodated Boyne, plus one on a seat that folded down from the wall.

The crew, many of whom had grown up in sputtering auto-caravans, loved Boyne’s voice, especially when he was on about things they didn’t know. It was, for them, as close as they’d ever come to a formal education.

Boyne took a deep, self-appreciative breath, and exhaled. “Yes, boys, we are modern-day Spartans protecting our way of life from ignorance and the Persian horde.”

“Fuckin’ towel ’eddz,” bellowed Number Five, the youngest, largest and most unpredictable of this troop. Boyne’s men went by numbers, which were embroidered on their collars. They were all on short deployments. Entry to this detachment was a reward for exceptional service to New Hibernia, but short-lived. Only the Driver was permanent.

Boyne closed his window and snatched up a printout of Brian Tessyier. “Where’s our Judas?” he said, gazing out at the monotonous chrome and glass frontage. “It all looks the same,” he complained.

The GPS voice, a sexy Irish woman, interrupted: “Turn right to final destination in two hundred feet.”

“Park at the corner, Captain?” asked The Driver.

“No, no, no, park right in front.”

They rounded the corner and rolled up to the gargantuan Cube P. The back door swung open. Boyne stepped out onto the street, turned and reached into a compartment in the door panel and removed a metallic briefcase. All of the transporter’s sides slid open and the crew gathered round.

“How you want this, Captain?” asked Number Three, weighing a shotgun in one hand and a baseball bat in the other. “Loud or lumpy?”

Boyne gave him a patient smile. “This is a service call.” He strolled to the door and raised the metal briefcase. “To deliver the forty pieces of silver.”

* * *

M
acIan’s Peregrine rocketed toward Pittsburgh
. Max glanced over his seat at Otis, who raised his eyebrows and wobbled his hand — she’s iffy. Max turned to the onrushing sky, his stomach a coiled snake. He’d flown before, to see Miss Camille, but that was a Sunday stroll compared to this. A wave of blinding vertigo shot through him as MacIan reached for the phone button. He squeezed his eyes shut, until the painfully loud dial tone was replaced by Camille’s voice.

Camille was half asleep on the couch with the phone to her ear, not sure who was calling.

“Camille? You all right?” asked MacIan. “You OK?”

She steadied herself on the back of the couch and rubbed one eye. The short nap had only numbed her, but her mood was much improved. “Who is this?” she croaked, pulling her Afghan comforter around her shoulders.

“It’s Trooper MacIan. Are you all right?”

“I was.”

“Sorry, but I think you’d better hunker down . . .”

Camille cut him off, laughing, “Hunker down! What the . . ! Do people still say ‘hunker down’?”

MacIan wrinkled his chin at Max, and they both had a quiet chuckle. “Camille, please listen! A squad of Black Hearts came to Lily and shot the Pastor’s wife. They were asking about your father.”

“What!?”

“Check your doors.”

She put him on speaker and hurried to the door, checked the locks, then pressed on the metal back-plate where the intercom was mounted. It pulled out like a sliding pantry, holding three machine pistols and a handy-rack of fully loaded clips. “I’m listening,” she said.

“We’re taking the wounded woman to the hospital, in Pittsburgh. Secure your position and prepare to change locations.”

Silence.

“Camille! Do you hear me?”

Camille danced through her office switching everything on. “I’m not going anywhere.”

MacIan turned to Max. “You’re up.”

Max pleaded, “Please, Miss Camille, you gotta get out of there.”

Camille’s voice turned motherly. “Is that you, Max?”

“Yes, Miss Camille. You have to listen to Trooper Mac . . .”

“You forget who you’re talking to? And where I am?”

MacIan wondered why she was never sarcastic with Max.

“It’s not safe there . . .”

“Not true,” she said. “You’ve been here.”

She ran to the front door, which was made from one steel slab hung from heavy chrome hinges and trimmed in varnished ironwood. She pulled on a piece of the trim and two thick dead-bolts rose from of the floor and ceiling, barring the door.

“Camille,” said MacIan. “Let’s talk this through.”

“Let’s not . . .”

Max tagged in. “Miss Camille. Miss Camille. Please . . .”

“Oh, Max. I pulled my dad’s whole wardrobe — you’re the only one I know his size.”

Max and MacIan looked at each other helplessly.

“Thanks,” said Max, in full retreat.

“You’re going to be the best dressed bachelor in Lily.”

Max felt the Peregrine decelerate. What a relief. “Thank you, Miss Camille. But I’m the only bachelor in Lily.”