Systemic Shock

transferred units, India kept ANZUS invaders guessing. China no longer needed those Indian reinforcements because the American Fifth Army had pulled out, taking up new positions in the Irkutsk region north of Mongolia. The Allies no longer feared a coordinated breakout from Mongolia but, perhaps inevitably, Russian troops had run short of antipersonnel mines and Frisbees before retreating.

The Russians knew of Chinese Plague from their radios, and those who placed little faith in protective CBW gear (i.e., most RUS troops) feared that they faced an enemy more than human. A Siberian salient already bulged up across the Amur, chiefly of harmless tribesmen seeking abandoned riches, becoming less harmless as plague spread into the tribes. Our Fifth Army made good use of RUS railways, racing to new positions above the Siberian salient. Thanks to excellent medical aid and frequent injections of half-truths in briefings, the morale of US troops was still good.

Keratophagic staph, our troops were told, depended largely on transmission from host to host, unlike windborne paranthrax. If you were young and well-fed, and if you stayed well clear of infiltrating locals, you might not be in danger. The CBW masks and envelopes would protect you in plague spots. The advance of the enemy — assuming he could rally for any advance — had been taken into account by the countless millions of antipersonnel minelets left by our re treating armies which we could trigger by microwave, or an enemy footfall could do it. The RUS still employed their interdicting Frisbees while backing away from the Sinkiang border. The westward retreat of our First and Third Armies was orderly.

The US Sixth and Eighth Armies still protected sortie bases in India, devastating that country's efforts to harvest a crop—any crop. The Viets were clamoring to know the whereabouts of some twenty divisions of troops they had sent into Szechuan. Allied media were only too happy to suggest a numbing truth (which we did not for a moment believe), namely that entire Viet divisions littered the floor of the Pacific in small defunct submarines. All this, our officers made clear to our troops. From several quarters, Allied troops were repeating an old phrase: home by Christmas.

In short, our troops got only the news.

Non-news: neutral Mexico, though pro-Allies, permitted a few well-heeled SinoInd refugees to take refuge in the State of Nayarit in June before she identified at least one case of plague among them. Removed offshore to the Islas Marias, they posed no threat beyond that of rumor.

Non-news: the rumor of Chinese Plague in Mexico was itself a news-vectored plague, gaining early credence through a few initial holo and radio broadcasts in our southern border cities. Our subsequent denials were fruitless appeals to frightened householders in Tucson and San Diego suburbs. While admitting that 'a few' Americans were needlessly evacuating, we did not add that in three days' time no US Customs people remained at Mexican border posts. Well-supplied by Pemex, Mexicans lost little time in streaming across the border. If gringos were fleeing from shadows, an enterprising campesino could help himself to what they left behind. Within a week, Pemex fuel was sloshing in Mexican trucks that plied the roads north of Mexicali, Nogales, Ciudad Juarez, in entrepreneurial support of this casual invasion. For the first time, America was learning what Germans had experienced in the final months of World Warn.

Non-news: the US Fourth Army was thinly spread on the west coast and depended on Mexico for half of its refined fuel since most of our refineries were in ruins. When Mexican tankers began to produce passengers as well as diesel fuel from San Diego to San Pedro, we had the choice of accepting both or neither. The Mexicans would not listen to schemes that kept their citizens offshore. This disrespect for US law was directly proportional to our loss of clout in Mexican eyes. Since the 1980's, Mexico's petroleum traffic had expanded her wealth greatly, but the US had lost half her population and ninety per cent of her industrial potential in the first week of the war. We were still capable of defying Mexico, but running on our reserves. It was a forthright case of a healthy neighbor leaning on a sick one, and only the politically naive were surprised. We had done exactly the same to Mexico, twice upon a time.Power politics is the only kind there is.

Non-news: our Second Army had all it could do to enforce the continental quarantine and to guard our eastern shores. It was a sympathetic army of occupation, committed to an endless fight against paranthrax in a battle that required great courage and stamina, but conferred little glory.

Non-news: White House Central abandoned its Sandia Mountain warrens for a safer residence in the Wasatch Mountains east of Salt Lake City. White House Deseret was a phrase, and a concept, deeply satisfying to many men in the Collier administration. The citizens of Utah, largely Latter-Day Saints, were among the staunches! patriots and most unquestioning followers America had ever produced. In this climate of Mormon hope for a devout America, only one internal problem had grown larger: the guerrilla groups. Outlaw bands continued to borrow the trappings of Godliness to support their claims to plunder.

Yale Collier's days were focused increasingly on items in the non-news — not a very encouraging sign. He could not afford to threaten Mexico, a major energy supplier, with force against her lackadaisical occupation of our soil. The Mexicans ignored our borders from the wild country of southwest Texas to the coast of central California. It had been a mistake to build tanker facilities at Lompoc and Monterey because Mexicans leaving those tankers triggered widespread evacuation in those coastal regions south of San Francisco. It did little good to broadcast subtle hints that a foreign pilgrim could not spread disease after his burial. It did no good at all to insist that Mexicans were not carriers of the plague that was blinding China.

Collier studied holo maps with the commanding general of Fourth Army, and prayed for guidance. At bottom, Collier believed in the goodness of humankind, and mourned the necessity to wage an undeclared guerrilla war on Mexican emigrants. But already El Paso, Las Cruces, Tucson, and the California coast above San Francisco were ruins in which Mexicans, not US citizens, sifted the detritus and reclaimed the land. If it was to be war, it would have to be low-key, and defensive. We did not have the troops to pursue it far, and Canada rejected our suggestions that Canadian troops might help us. For that matter, we were none too keen to give Canada more influence on our soil than she already had.

After a forty-eight-hour search of his soul, President Collier accepted the plan of Fourth Army strategists. Our fuel reserves would support redeployment of infantry on the western side of the San Joaquin Valley, thence in a thin khaki line south of the Mojave to Phoenix and Roswell. While giving up (temporarily, Collier told himself; only temporarily) valuable anchorages, we still had access to the Pacific from Point Arena northward. Our Navy still owned the continental shelf. Oil fields near Bakersfield and the fecund farms of the San Joaquin would still be ours, protected by the Fourth Army. In effect, we had leased some of our soil to Mexico in exchange for fuel.

Unofficially, the Mexican Government was understanding. If by some miracle the SinoInds managed a west coast invasion, the Mexican fuel would help us reclaim what latinos now called Alta Mexico. Officially, we permitted Mexican squatters while warning that we could not assure their safety.

Collier dared to hope that a persistent CIA abstract from Canada was more than rumor, though Canada was equally persistent in her confidential denials to White House Deseret. Moreover, said the Canadian ambassador, any open rumor that Canadians had beaten keratophagic staph would only exacerbate troubled relations between Canada and the RUS; the beleaguered Russians would instantly demand the secret. A secret (the ambassador repeated) which did not exist. After all: if Canada had found a cure, would she not already be distributing it?

The implied answer was 'yes'. The correct answer was 'no'. Canada needed time to produce her breakthrough against S. rosacea in quantity, and to distribute it selectively.

Chapter Seventy-Three

'Selah,' intoned the Prophet Jansen.

Quantrill responded like the others, got to his feet, willed the pins and needles to leave his feet after an hour on his knees in a sweltering barn with fifty others. Rituals of the Church of The Sacrificed Lamb owed little to Mormonism, much to enthusiasm. Once again Seth Howell's briefings were verified in the field; the zealot gangs borrowed just enough from the LDS to attract some unstable Mormon rejects. Whatever crimes they committed would ultimately be placed, by gentiles, at the feet of the LDS. No wonder, then, that the Collier administration entrusted its remedy to T Section…

'I see you got the grease out of your hair in time for devotionals, Brother Stone,' said Prophet Monroe, a sallow-haired little man in a suit that had once been expensive. Monroe kept the financial books for the church, but had also helped with an engine change the day before. Barring his religious views, he seemed a reasonable