holo-screen. IEE was little more than a set of interlocked intentions so far, and had provoked liberal outcries when those intentions reached the Securities Exchange Commission. But the nation still reeled from its war losses: we had failed to obtain full reparation in the peace so recently negotiated by Canada, Brazil, and Arabia between the allies and SinoInds. The war had begun over the price of oil, and impoverished America now found the stuff dearer than ever. Islam had not really fought the war, but had won it nevertheless.
The United States needed efficient reconstruction, did not want it from outside, and could not obtain it from inside without ‘streamlining' a few checks against repressive monopolies. This kind of cooperation between government and industry had fertilized the Union Pacific and Standard Oil, and it could boost the growth of International Entertainment & Electronics.
IEE was a set of commercial broadcast networks, interlaced with the Holo Corporation of America, tied to Loring Aircraft, engaged to Entertainment Talent Associates, in bed with Deseret Pacific Industries, romantically linked to Latter-Day Shale. It would have to tread carefully around a few other surviving consortia and necessary evils such as organized labor — but tread, it would.
Blanton Young asked the pivotal question: 'And how much of all this is in the hands of devout stockholders?'
'Enough to assure us,' said the President, 'of the very most cordial relations. This country must never allow the identities of Church and State to merge,' he said, the great voice rolling across the room, 'but in Zion I foresee that both government and business will serve God.'
'A magnificent vision,' Young murmured as Collier wiped the display. 'I presume the Apostolic Council will recommend men for key positions in IEE. You'd be surprised how many shale company executives forgot they were Latter-Day Saints the day we confiscated their present-day mineral leases.'
'Regrettable — but predictable in sight of so many heretic groups. That's one job IEE will undertake early: to lead our strays back to righteousness through media. As it happens,' Collier went on, 'I have in mind a certain young man for IEE's Chief Executive Officer — who is not even a member of the Church.'
'You always have your reasons; I'm waiting,' said Young, always most comfortable when working under supervision.
'Commander Mills is a decorated war hero, a media genius, and a great organizer. No liberal rabble-rouser can show he's one of us.'
'Then how do you know he is?'
'By their works shall ye know them,' said Collier, 'and Mills is working for a vision of Zion that is very like our own.' The smile he turned on Young now was one of sadness, but not of self-pity: 'It will be your task to preserve that vision; to win more hearts; to keep the hearts we've won. In all loving kindness, Blanton, I offer you this warning: you have a tendency to persuade more by punishment than by reward. If this nation is to regain its old glory, it will be by the same old path of reward, with less emphasis on retribution. That is partly what I had in mind with the establishment of a Search and Rescue bureau,' he said, tapping another fax-sheet.
'Yes, Mr. President,' said Blanton Young, using the full title to suggest agreement with a philosophy he could never espouse. Raised in a strict household, Young respected punishment. His father had often said it: “An ass will use up bushels of carrots, but you only need one stick.'
'I'd like you to get back to work on this S & R bureau so the media people can give it exposure,' said Collier, renewing an old topic shelved during the secession months. The big hands flew over the keyboard, the voice resonant and vital as ever. It seemed implausible to Young that his chief was a dying man as Collier outlined a favorite scheme, a small arm of government that would come to represent the best any administration could offer.
Search & Rescue squads, chiefly underpaid paramedics, had long been on a few county payrolls and enjoyed enviable reputations. Now, living in ruins and short on dedicated paramedics, many Americans needed S & R teams more than ever. It was Yale Collier's dream to organize a federal cadre who would search out the lost; rescue the imperiled; and would do it on camera with panache, a reminder to Americans that a Godly administration would go anywhere in support.of its people. Smart uniforms, the latest equipment, the sharpest personnel, the best training. Such was the vision of President Yale Collier.
The Vice President questioned, advised, concurred, silently filed away some thoughts for further study. An S & R bureau might achieve great things with sparse funding, he saw, and said as much; but he cautioned that some rescues would inevitably involve victims of the paramilitary bands that defied the central government.
Collier tended to gloss over this facet of the S & R charter; yes, yes, certainly an S & R team should be capable of handling a few armed outlaws on occasion, but it was important that S & R build an image more of rescue team than SWAT team.
Thus was oral agreement reached without a meeting of minds. As he sat beside his old friend and made notes on organization details, Blanton Young again mulled over the sort of recruits he might prefer. It was certain that some of the clear-eyed young S & R men — and women, of course, for show — would be confronted by brutish, bewhiskered ruffians who swaggered up to spit into the eye of Authority. The kind of rebels now termed by the LDS as 'Gadianton robbers'.
And how should God's judgments be meted out to the wicked? Young was in no doubt here; he knew the passage well from the Book of Mormon, iv, 5:
'…the judgments of God will overtake the wicked; and it is by the wicked that the wicked are punished…'
Young was pleased with the neatness of his secret solution. Forty years before, an American administration had recruited the wartime wicked of the OSS into an ostensibly peaceable CIA. Surely, the armed forces still harbored a few young cutthroats who would not look out of place among the clear-eyed exemplars of Streamlined America…
Chapter Eighty
'… and in the coming months we'll be seeing a lot of these special, dedicated people,' hummed the voice of Eve Simpson. On the big holo screen of T Section's briefing room near Santa Fe, a powerfully built young man winched himself to the portal of an open elevator shaft carrying a limp and lovely girl to safety. The voice-over continued on the slickly made documentary, but no one was listening anymore.
'Ethridge, you let 'em pluck your eyebrows,' crowed Barb Zachary, glancing from the screen to the blushing Kent Ethridge. The gunsel, Ethridge, was one of perhaps two dozen in the room. T Section survivors; a small elite assembly.
'We made a deal; they let me pluck the blonde,' Ethridge replied. Actually, Ethridge had played the part only on orders, after a computer search cited his gymnastic grace, and after Eve Simpson saw him on an old holotape.
Max Pelletier, tiny and dark and lethal as a Brown Recluse: 'You should've held out for the Simpson hotsy, Kent.'
'Fat as a pig,' Ethridge protested. 'I don't know how they hid that on the holo.'
'I can see this isn't holding you spellbound,' said the disgusted instructor Seth Howell, flicking on the room lights and freezing the holo frame. Howell wore a uniform identical to the one Ethridge had worn in the holotape: flare-leg black synthosuedes, long-sleeved black blouse with turned-back cuffs and deep vee collar, set off by a brilliant yellow side-tie neckerchief. On his left shoulder was a yellow sunflower patch with centered, stylized
'Of course they hyped it — even stuck Ethridge in a dress uniform. On assignment you'd wear a mottled two-piece coverall and overlap-closure boots.'
'Always assuming you could make the grade,' put in Marty Cross, who'd been harping all morning on the difference between the simple requirements of T Section and the broad-spectrum charter of the Search & Rescue people. Cross was in civvies — but boasted a tiny sunflower emblem on a neck chain.
'Hype, hype, hype, hype,' chanted Des Quinn, as if counting cadence. 'I joined up for the duration. The
