LDS Council members who were to be expended through 'natural causes' by the good offices of S & R rovers. Now, with Mills present, Young advanced his agenda to the media problem.
'I'm using all the leverage I have, Mr. President,' Mills pleaded. 'But the Israelis insist they can't help us knock out those media relays. Surely the Air Force has something that can intercept them.'
'A massive search-and-destroy grid for a hundred million dollars, yes,' Young snarled. 'All to knock down a cheap, slow-flying gadget the Indys can replace the next day for ten thousand. Those broadcasts are hurting us, Mills!'
To divert the President's wrath, Mills said, 'It might be a lot quicker to send some rovers into Mexico to —'
'Be reasonable,' Salter said in disgust. 'A handful of rovers without air support in a foreign country?
We've got a medium out of control, Mills! That's your department.'
The President grunted something to the tall brunette: shifted so that her perspiration did not fall on his neck. Then, 'Salter's right. And you're not handling your departments very well these days.'
'There's one thing we might try,' Mills hazarded. 'You know we're using animated holo that can pass for the real thing. What if we claimed it's the Indys who are faking holocasts?'
'I'm listening,' said Young.
Mills expanded on his ploy. That ghastly broadcast with the defector, Quantrill, for example: FBN had enough videotape to generate a sound-enhanced image of the turncoat that would have charisma — would pass for the real thing. Using the animation software stored in CenCom, FBN programmers could electronically fake a holocast in which Ted Quantrill would swear on prime time that he'd been victimized somehow; was still a devoted member of the falsely-maligned S & R. Holo pundits could suggest that the Indy media were using imposters; no need to mention the possibility of electronic fakery. The overall effect might be to cast doubt on all mass media, but FBN could counter that trend if men of unblemished reputation were to vouch for the FBN lie.
'Even though you'd be faking their images too,' Young nodded. 'Might work. I can think of a few old codgers on the Council of Apostles who won't object,' he added, with a meaningful glance at Salter. He mentioned three names, all of Apostles who would soon be unable to protest the use of their holo images.
Mills agreed to oversee the job. Without Eve Simpson, he would have to supervise the thing personally.
It was taking much longer than he'd hoped to turn his vast personal holdings into cash — but where he was going, they dealt out immunities on a strictly-cash basis. In the meantime he had to step through his Little minuets with Blanton Young as if he were not gathering himself for a leap into limbo. Better a temporary retirement than to be permanently retired by someone like Quantrill.
'There's one more thing,' Young said. 'I know you captains of industry have your little secrets, Mills, but you don't lie to the general. You led me to believe I could depend on some fuckin' sea-water process for strategic metals; and now I find the stuff was coming from smack in the middle of Zion.'
Mills did not shift his gaze. He did not have to, to identify the carefully noncommittal expression on Salter's face. The sonofabitch! How much had he told? Salter was covering his ass, which meant the S & R chief no longer valued his alliance with IEE — or at least with Mills. 'I–I deeply regret that, Mr. President.'
Young bored in; Salter had told it all. 'Not only did you fail to place a vital discovery under national security. You let that pig Eve Simpson lose a miniature version of it in Wild Country
'No, sir.' Mills kept his head down in his best display of contrition. Given the least chance, Young was increasingly capable of indulging in violent tantrums. He had seen the man rumble and groan in his own personal earthquakes before, but until now Mills hadn't found himself at the epicenter. Face turned to heaven, bellowing of Gadianton robbers and of terrible retribution, Young stumbled over the brunette and kicked out viciously. She scurried out of the way, holding her ribs, making no outcry. Presently his furies subsided and Young stood over the other men in the stance of one who has gained some gallant victory.
He waited until his breath had steadied.
'Boren Mills,' said the President, 'I'm told you have a pair of Chink scientists left and a roomful of pieces to put together. And you are going to see that it all gets put together. Tomorrow morning, you'll get a call from a fellow in Technology Assessment about a certain top secret project that you will lead. Personally.'
'Yes, Mr. President.' Mills wondered if the crazy bastard thought he could dragoon the head of IEE into such a farce — then reflected that the President of Streamlined America could do exactly that. He could kick Mills's brains out right here in the executive apartment, and no one would ever find out. On the morrow, one of the Twenty-First Century's shrewdest organizers would be juggling a hopeless synthesizer project and an animated holo scheme that might just backfire on him, to satisfy the inspired hallucinations of a crackbrained dictator. Mills could think of several absolute rulers before Young who'd followed the same pattern, and three of them had eventually turned on their best men.
Smug in his assurance that God would not let him err, Blanton Young stared down at Mills. 'Consider this a trial, Mills. There is only one indispensable man in Zion, and you are not that man. Now get out of my sight. I want to see that animated holo of yours in three days.'
Mills knew better than to argue about deadlines. He was as powerless in Young's presence as that big brunette hotsy and he made his exit a quick one. At least he still had some freedom of movement, and a fraction of his once-stupendous fortune converted to gemstones. He would simply have to abandon the rest.
CHAPTER 63
Just as travelers in the old West moved from waterhole to waterhole, travel in Wild Country depended on precious liquids. If you were on a horse you still watched for windmills and learned which rivers were running: Rio Frio, Llano, Pecos. If you rode a fast hovercycle you needed diesel fuel, and rebel fuel dumps were hidden near places like Hondo, Del Rio, Alpine. With their pannier tanks, Lufo confided, they could make the round-trip from Jim Street's ranch to Rocksprings and back. Unless of course they got jumped by brush poppers, outlaws whose only allegiance was to booty — and in that case he and Quantrill were ordered to disengage. Translation: run like hell. Their mission had nothing to do with cleaning out the brush poppers; old Street needed that little Sinolnd nuke and he needed it yesterday. Did it really exist? Quien sabe?
The dust trails of the two 'cycles varied with their speed and the terrain, and Lufo knew the proper pace to minimize a dust signature. Long ago he had trained Quantrill in unarmed combat; now he was once again the instructor.
Skating along a dry creekbed their passage might have been heard a few hundred meters distant and when they talked, it was with their scrambled short-range headsets. 'So this ol' woman brought me to Odessa and seein' it was a head wound with a few birdshot, they X-rayed me and found my critic. By the time I woke up, I was a man without a name or a critic, and I liked it that way,' Lufo said, explaining his defection from Army Intelligence. 'Always felt bad about getting you in, compadre, because of that chingada critic.'
'S'all right,' Quantrill lied. 'Hey: tripwire ahead!'
Lufo jerked his head around. 'O-ho. Watch your right skyline and squeeze off at anything that moves,' he said, splitting his own attention between the high ground to their left and the glistening wire ahead.
'Now you'll see how the antenna works,' he added, continuing at the same pace.
The 'antenna' formed a parabolic arch from the front end of the hovercycle, over the rider's head, to the sturdy pillion behind the jumpseat. Its spring aluminum alloy was triangular in cross-section with a stainless steel blade set into the top edge and Lufo's first warning to Quantrill had been to avoid grasping it. The damned thing would slice through a glove and the tendons beneath it — or sever a thin wire strung across its path.
Lufo gunned the engine to get additional lift as he neared the cable. His vehicle bobbed lower as it swept under the taut wire, polymer skirts scuffing the creekbed, and then Quantrill encountered the same effect.
He saw the cable vibrating in Lufo's wake, felt a solid thump as his own 'cycle kissed the creekbed, and then he was past it, craning his neck to the right with his H & K out and ready.
