Prisoners of Tomorrow (10 page)

The greater the contribution to the success of the system, the greater the guilt. It followed that, along with the chemist, the auto maker, the pharmacist, and the nuclear engineer, one of the most persecuted victims of the process should be the American farmer. He had, after all, raised productivity to a point where three percent of the population could not only feed the country better than seventy percent had been able to a century earlier, but could also export a hefty surplus—freeing lots of intellectuals to write in comfort on the evils of production and to campaign for the civil rights of the malaria virus while treating people as pollution.

Consequently, after putting up with years of harassment from inquisitorial regulators and political activists seeking to ban everything from fertilizers to farm mechanization, Malcolm sold the farm and moved the family to California, where he invested the proceeds in an agricultural-machinery business that provided a reasonable living. Throughout Lewis’s teenage years, Malcolm had continued to rage about “corporate socialism”—by which he meant the agribusiness giant that had bought the land in Iowa—as much as Julia warned against collectivism. It no more represented the spirit of America, he used to fume, than the liberal-socialist element in Washington, and had played as great a part in bringing about the economic mess and cultural negativism of the seventies.

Thus, one of Lewis’s parents was a refugee from a tyranny that had destroyed the worth of a lifetime’s labor; the other had been a victim of legalized witch-hunting in the name of ideology. Reflection on these things produced a deep sense of resentment and injustice in Lewis as a youth. He concluded that there were no such things as inalienable “natural” rights. The only rights that meant anything were those that could be defended—by custom, by law, and, if necessary, by force.

McCain graduated from UCLA at twenty-two with BA degrees in Political History and Modern Languages. These qualifications, along with his innate skepticism and desire to preserve his individuality, added up to a good grounding for work in the intelligence community. Hence, when, desperate to escape from the tedium of California farm-country life, he attended on-campus interviews for entry into the armed services, a recruiter from another department of the government pounced on him instead. So, he’d ended up back at school, this time with the UDIA at its training center in Maryland. Upon completion of the course he went to its headquarters to work as an administrative assistant, which he fondly assumed would be a cover title for more exciting and glamorous things. But the job turned out to be just what it said—clerk—and for two boring years he proved his loyalty by shuffling papers, filling in forms, sorting incoming material, and checking facts . . . and checking them again, and then rechecking them. The experience turned out to be vital to becoming an effective agent.

Since then he’d spent some years in Europe with NATO intelligence, which was followed by six months back in the US for intensive training on such things as codes and communications, observation, security, concealment and evasion, weapons and self-defense, breaking and entering, lock picking, safe cracking, wiretaps, bugs, and other noble arts. After that he’d gone back to Europe to be introduced to counterintelligence directed against Soviet espionage into NATO weaponry, and then back to the States for courses in Eastern languages and advanced Russian—he’d spoken Czech and German, which Julia and Ralph had often conversed in, since he was a boy. From there he’d been sent on a series of assignments in the Far East, beginning with a position at the US embassy in Tokyo. His last job before being recalled to Washington for the Pedestal mission was developing a network of intelligence contacts and sources in Peking. And through all of it, everything he’d seen reinforced his original conviction that the Western way wasn’t such a bad way to live. Yet there were lots of people out there who for one reason for another, real or imagined, were ready to bring the West down if they got the chance.

The key sounded in the door, and McCain sat up. It was too early for lunch. Protbornov entered, accompanied by a major called Uskayev. Behind them was a guard carrying a canvas bag. Protbornov looked around, his dark eyes moving casually beneath their heavy lids. He took a blue pack of Russian cigarettes from one of the pockets in his tunic, selected one, and almost as if it were an afterthought offered the pack to McCain. McCain shook his head. “You must be feeling almost at home here by now,” Protbornov rumbled. “Well, how would you say we have treated you? Not unfairly, I trust?”

“It could be worse,” McCain agreed neutrally.

Protbornov lit his cigarette and lifted one of the books from the shelf to inspect its title. “A pity that it requires so much to convince you that we really are not so uncivilized. You do have an extraordinarily suspicious nature, you know, Mr. Earnshaw—an impediment for a journalist, I would have thought. Your female companion thinks so, too. I’d imagine that many people you’ve met in life have said the same. Have you ever thought about that? Is it possible, do you think, that you could be wrong on some things, and that the consensus of others might have some merit?” He flipped casually through the pages of the book, and then, either accidentally or making the motion appear so, ran a finger down the edge of the back cover. From the corner of an eye McCain saw Uskayev watching him closely, and forced himself to suppress any flicker of reaction.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to be too influenced by other people’s opinions,” McCain said.

“Your Air Force scientist friend would agree with you on that,” Protbornov replied, searching McCain’s face as he spoke. “A most obstinate woman. But be that as it may, she recognizes the importance of the present situation and its relevance to world security, and she has agreed to cooperate responsibly by making a public statement of the kind we have requested.” Protbornov gestured in the air with his cigarette and shrugged indifferently. “So now you don’t matter to us so much. The only issue you need concern yourself with is your own fate. If you adopted a more reasonable attitude than the one you’ve been showing, well, anything is possible. If not . . .” he shrugged again, “what happens then will be up to the Kremlin. But as I said, it is no longer of primary importance to us.”

McCain looked at him almost contemptuously. “I expected something better than that. Don’t tell me you’re slipping.”

Protbornov seemed to have been prepared for as much. “Policy decisions are not my concern,” he said. “My job is simply to carry them out. For whatever reason, orders have come through for you to be moved to another location. You should find it more congenial—at least you will have company . . . and the opportunity for more stimulating conversations than ours tend to be.” He indicated the bag that the guard had placed on the table. “Collect your belongings. You are to be transferred immediately.”

McCain began gathering together the clothes and personal effects that he had been given. “With a personal sendoff by the general? Why so honored?”

“Why not? I feel we have come to know one another a little in the course of the past three weeks, even if your attitude has been less than candid. A common courtesy from the host to a departing guest, maybe? Or simply a way to indicate that we desire no hard feelings?”

McCain went around the partition to retrieve his toilet articles. So far the whole thing had been an exercise in testing and probing for weaknesses, to be exploited later—and probably the same with Paula, too. What for? he wondered. There was a lot more behind it all than he had unraveled so far.

“So, where to?” he asked as he came back out, closing the bag. “Earthside?”

“Nothing so exciting, I’m afraid,” Protbornov replied. The guard was holding the door open. “It’s expensive to ship people between here and Earth. Why should we pay the bill for returning one of the United States’ spies to them? They can come and collect you when the time comes—assuming, of course, that Moscow decides to let them have you back. Until then, you remain here on
Tereshkova,
at a place called Zamork.” A guard went ahead. Protbornov walked by McCain, with the major a pace behind, while the guard who had held the door brought up the rear.

“Oh, you mean the gulag that you’ve got up here,” McCain said. Zamork was on the edge of the town known as Novyi Kazan, and was labeled vaguely on the maps as a detention facility. “I always admired how faithful a copy this is of the Mother County.”

“Oh, don’t think of Zamork as a gulag,” Protbornov said breezily. “Times are changing. Even your Christian heaven needed somewhere to keep its dissidents.”

“I take it that means we’re unlikely to be seeing the last of each other.”

“I’m sure the Fates have it in store for us to meet again.”

“What about Paula Shelmer? Will she be moving too?”

“We have received no orders concerning her.” There was a short silence. Then Protbornov added, “However, she is in good health and spirits. I thought you might like to know.”

“Thanks.”

Ten minutes later, McCain, accompanied by two armed guards, boarded a magdrive car at a monorail terminal underneath the Security Headquarters. Soon afterward, they departed around
Tereshkova
’s peripheral ring, bound for the town of Novyi Kazan.

CHAPTER NINE

According to the Soviet publicity material, Novyi Kazan was a center for arts, sports, and education, intended to provide rest, relaxation, and a contrast to Turgenev’s administrative bustle and the scientific-industrial concentration at Landausk. The travel guides made little mention of its including a prison. Maybe, McCain thought as he looked out of the speeding monorail car, that was what the Russian interpretation of rest and relaxation meant.

The car seemed to be a standard model containing three pairs of double seats facing each other on either side of a central aisle, but its only other occupants besides McCain were two armed guards.

Evidently this one was not for public use. It had left the jumble of Turgenev’s high-rise core and moved out along the valley that he and Paula had viewed from the terrace high over the town’s square on the day of their arrival. On one side, the central strip was an irregular ribbon of green, wandering among grassy mounds, clumps of shrubs, and occasional trees, with a stream threading its way from pool to pool between rocky banks as it collected cataracts tumbling in from the valley sides. Farther away beyond the green strip, wheeled vehicles vanished and reappeared at intervals on a hidden roadway roughly matching the monorail’s route. There were plenty of people, alone, in pairs, and in groups, talking, walking, or just sitting and watching the water; a woman was feeding ducks, and two boys were sailing a boat. Above it all, the twin ribbon-suns curved away out of sight in their artificial sky.

In an earlier century, the Russian empress Catherine the Great had decided to tour the countryside to observe the living conditions of the people for herself. Her chief adviser, Grigory Potemkin, sent advance parties ahead of the royal entourage to erect a whole make-believe world of fake villages with gaily painted facades to conceal the poverty and misery that the peasants had to endure. The people were forced to put on new clothes, loaned for the occasion, and dance, wave, strew flowers, and cheer to maintain the illusion. Afterward, scores of Western observers who had traveled with the royal party returned home filled with enthusiasm and admiration by the scenes they had witnessed. As McCain stared out of the window of the monorail car, he thought back to the reports he’d read by excited visitors to
Valentina Tereshkova,
bringing to the world their revelation of the changed face of communism. Just as others had come back with glowing accounts of Hitler’s Germany in the 1930’s.

Halfway along the agricultural zone outside Turgenev, the line passed through the clutter of processing plant, freight elevators, storage silos, and handling machinery piled around the base of the minor spoke, which was known as Agricultural Station 3 and possessed a geometry every bit as irregular and disorienting as that of the town. The roof here was clear for some distance on either side of where the spoke passed through, giving a breathtaking glimpse of the spoke’s entire length, soaring away to the hub structure a half mile overhead. Another half mile above that was the far side of the ring, and beyond, an endlessness of space and stars. The sight made the enclosing walls of
Valentina Tereshkova
suddenly seem very thin and fragile. For a while, McCain had almost forgotten he was in space at all.

Beyond the spoke, the car passed through more of the agricultural zone, all pretty much as before, and finally entered the outskirts of Novyi Kazan. Houses and apartments appeared strewn down the valley sides as at Turgenev, but with more greenery and water; a sports field came and went, with figures playing soccer, and the view ahead became one of buildings merging and rising toward another chaotic downtown center. Then the track entered a tunnel. The car slowed, and McCain watched through the front window as it lurched to follow a branch tunnel off the through-route.

One of the guards moved forward to the console under the window, which appeared to be the driver’s position when the car was being operated manually, and the car halted before a sturdy-looking metal door closing off the track ahead. A tone sounded, and an officer’s face appeared on the console screen. “Prisoner two-seven-one-zero-six for admission,” the guard said. The officer consulted something off-screen, then leaned forward to operate a control. A camera mounted inside the car pivoted slowly to survey the interior, pausing for a few seconds when it came to McCain’s face. Then the door ahead slid open. The car moved through and stopped beside a platform. The guards motioned to McCain to get out. When they emerged, the door across the track behind had already closed.

They were in what looked like a loading and unloading bay, with the track branching into two lines that ran parallel between service platforms for a distance and then merged again before disappearing through another door at the far end, also closed. More guards were standing on the platform that McCain and his escorts had stepped out onto. With them was a group of a dozen or so men in plain gray jackets and matching pants with scarlet stripes, who began filing into the car. They were of various colors and races, and McCain guessed them to be from the place that he was on his way to. Several of them glanced curiously at him as he passed. They seemed healthy enough and alert. At least it didn’t look as if he were about to join a house of zombies, he reflected as he walked between the guards toward the door opening off the platform.