“Which is what you're doing,” Ed said. “Well, I don't have your patience.” He stood up.
Casper watched as Ed walked away, then turned to Colby, who shrugged and sat silently in his chair.
Casper was thinking over what he had just said to Ed, and trying to match it against reality-the reality of the history of the United States.
Since 1865, no revolutionary group in the U.S. had ever gotten very far. There had never been a serious coup attempt in all the hundred and fifty years since. Every assassination had resulted in a peaceful transfer of power to the designated successor. Even the most disputed elections hadn't led to violence.
Casper wanted to think that no revolutionary in all that time had had his own abilities, and that the government had never before been so corrupt and unpopular, but he had to admit to himself that he was probably being optimistic about that. Hell, before his imprinting he hadn't had any knowledge of subversion or rebellion, and the stuff in his head now couldn't be any better than the abilities of the people who wrote the file, none of whom had actually overthrown the U.S. government.
And the government had been corrupt or unpopular during Reconstruction, under Hoover, in the Vietnam era-there had been revolutionary movements and mass demonstrations sometimes, but nothing had ever come close to actually overthrowing the system.
Revolutions and counter-revolutions in the U.S. had come about at the ballot box or in the courts, not in the streets. Cecelia had been telling him that, telling him that the way to defy the power structure was to become part of it, but he had been resisting.
He had wanted to find some way to bring the whole thing down from the outside, but looking at it, he didn't think it could be done. Seizing power stations wouldn't do anything but piss people off.
The communications network couldn't be seized-there was far, far too much of it. Two thousand TV networks, transmitting by satellite; the internet supplying information through a system designed to withstand anything up to and including a nuclear war; the multiply-redundant cellular phone systems; thousands of radio stations
…?
And that wasn't even considering such alternative, semi-obsolete forms as faxes and newspapers.
Taking over the military… well, first off, Casper doubted it could be done; the military was so thoroughly integrated with the civilian population and power structure that he couldn't see any way to detach it. But even if he did, he didn't think a military coup would work. There were three million people in the military-and three hundred million guns in civilian hands. The army would not necessarily bring the National Guard with it, and almost certainly wouldn't carry the police.
And it wouldn't carry the media, or the people.
Besides, the idea was to set up a better, more democratic government, a multi-party government, not a military dictatorship.
A temporary military government might not be a disaster; it had certainly worked in other countries. Casper could use it to root out the most corrupt elements of the government, then stage new elections. But the military- backed candidates would lose in the elections, and the military might refuse to step aside.
It might be worth a try if nothing else worked, but it didn't look like a very appealing course of action.
And if you looked at history…?
Maybe, Casper thought, leaning on the kitchen table, he was going about this wrong. He wanted to get the Party out of power, and replace it with people of his own choosing. He'd been looking at revolution as the way to do that-but maybe that wasn't the only way, or even the best way.
He wanted to get his own people into power. The government said he was a terrorist. Well, where had one- time terrorists wound up in power?
Soviet Russia. Nazi Germany. Israel. The Taliban's Afghanistan. Palestine.
Those were not very cheering comparisons.
But it was worth noting that only half of the examples that had sprung immediately to mind-and he knew there were others he hadn't thought about-involved terrorists successfully leading a violent revolution and seizing power by force. Hitler had maneuvered his way to power through the 1932 election, and the Israeli terrorists had been elected.
Having been a terrorist apparently didn't make one unelectable.
Of course, this might not apply in America-but elections were definitely the way to transfer power here. A political party had a much better shot at overthrowing the government than a revolutionary cell did.
So where could he get a political party? He looked around at Colby, who was still silently watching him, and at the dingy little kitchen.
People For Change consisted, so far as he could determine, of about twenty people, of whom half a dozen, not counting himself, Mirim, and Cecelia, lived right here. There were another hundred or so people who supported PFC at least to the point of knowing about it without turning anyone in for that last string of bombings in New York four years ago. Not even Ed, the unrepentant cop-killer who made everyone nervous, had been ratted out.
That wasn't much to start with in founding a political movement, but it was better than nothing.
He had an organization, at least a minimal one. He had a charismatic leader, in himself-for a moment he marveled at his own arrogance in describing himself that way, but he dismissed that; thanks to whatever the government had put in his head, he was a charismatic leader, or at least could become one. He knew it.
What else did he need?
Money. He needed money to buy access to the networks, more access than an ordinary citizen could get- nobody actually watched the public-access stuff where the loonies raved, and political discussions on the net just degenerated into endless arguments that sensible people filtered out. To attract mass attention, you needed to be in the mass media. That was how the whole system had gone bad in the first place-only millionaires could afford to run for office, and millionaires weren't going to screw around with the corporate structures that had made them rich, other than to make themselves even richer.
If he could talk to people with money, he knew he could raise the funds he'd need-but how could he do that? Not through public-access channels or the public nets, that was certain. Maybe if he could get onto talk shows? But how could he do that while he was still a fugitive?
And he would also need a front organization that people could donate to-it didn't have to be elaborate, a box number and a bank account should just about cover it. He'd need an employee, someone who wasn't wanted by the feds, to sign all the papers-but PFC ought to be able to provide that.
He wondered how much of this he was figuring out on his own, and how much had been programmed into him. He had no way of telling.
But did it really matter? However it got there, it was there, and he might was well get on with it. He needed to build up a political organization; that was more important than a military one in the U.S. There was something in him that was very, very unhappy with that idea, but that he was fairly sure was part of the programming he'd received.
To build a political organization he needed access to people-but it didn't have to be live, did it?
“So,” he asked Colby, “is there a vidcam around here?”
“A vidcam? You mean a webcam?” Colby glanced over his shoulder.
“I was hoping for something a little better, but a webcam would do.”
“I don't know. Probably.”
Annoyed, Casper got to his feet and marched into the next room; Colby watched him go without comment.
The unattended computer in the next room had no webcam attached, so far as Casper could see, but as long as he was there he logged into the local network to see whether one might show up. None did, but as long as he was online he took a moment to check his e-mail log, the replies to the messages he'd posted on the nets under various pseudonyms.
Most of it, judging by the subject lines, looked like the usual junk-people agreeing with him, people arguing with him, people trying to sell him things.
One entry on the list caught his eye, though.
“32: From: R.S. CHI Subject: C'PR BCH”
Casper recognized his own name in the subject line immediately-but he also saw that the government watchdog programs wouldn't. A human being might, but the volume of e-mail traffic was far too great for the
