The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge (18 page)

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Authors: Vernor Vinge

BOOK: The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge
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“Dios.
It
is
you, Wil! I thought you were dead or captured.”
“Neither, just yet. You’re following this ruckus?”
“Por cierto
. And most news services are covering it. I wager they’re spending more money than your blessed Michigan State Police on this war. Unless that nuke was one of yours? Wili, my boy, that was spectacular. You took out twenty percent of their armor.”
“It wasn’t one of ours, Rober.”
“Ah. Just as well. Midwest Jurisprudence would withdraw service for something like that.”
Time was short, but Wil couldn’t resist asking, “What is MSP up to?”
Richardson sighed. “About what I’d expect. They’ve finally brought some aircraft in. They’re buzzing around the tip of Dave Crick’s salient. The Springfield Cyborg Club has gone after the New Mexican supply lines. They were causing some damage. A cyborg is a bit hard to kill, and Norcross Security is supplying them with transports and weapons. The New Mexicans have Wáchendon suppressors down to battalion level, so there’s no bobbling. The fighting looks quite twentieth century.
“You’ve got a lot of public opinion behind you—even in the Republic, I think—but not much firepower.
“You know, Wil, you fellows should have bought more from me. You saved a few million, maybe, passing up those aerial torpedoes and assault craft, and the tanks. But look where you are now. If—”
“Jesus, that’s Robber Richardson!” It was Big Al; he had been watching the holo with growing wonder.
Richardson squinted at his display. “I can hardly see anything on this, Wil. Where in perdition are you calling from? And to you, Unseen Sir, it’s
Roberto
Richardson.”
Big Al walked toward the sunlit porch. He got within an apparent two meters of Richardson before he banged into the conference table. “You’re the sort of scum who’s responsible for this! You sold the New Mexicans everything they couldn’t build themselves: the high-performance aircraft, the military electronics.” Al waved at the cabinets in the darkened van. What he claimed was largely true. Wil had noticed the equipment stenciled with Richardson’s logo, “USAF Inc—Sellers of Fine Weapon Systems for More than Twenty Years”; the New Mexicans hadn’t even bothered to paint it out. Roberto had started out as a minor Aztlán nobleman. He’d been in just the right place at the time of the
Bobble War, and had ended up controlling the huge munition dumps left by the old Peace Authority. That had been the beginning of his fortune. Since then, he had moved into the ungoverned lands, and begun manufacturing much of his own equipment. The heavy industry he had brought to Bellevue was almost on the scale of the twentieth century—or of modern New Mexico.
Richardson came half out of his chair and chopped at the air in front of him. “See here. I have to take enough such insults from my niece and her grandchildren. I don’t have to take them from a stranger.” He stood, tossed his display flat on the chair, and walked to the steps that led down to his shaded river.
“Wait, Rober!” shouted Brierson. He waved Big Al back to the depths of the van. “I didn’t call to pass on insults. You wondered where I’m calling from. Well, let me tell you—”
By the time he finished, the old gunrunner had returned to his seat. He started to laugh. “I should have guessed you’d end up talking right out of the lion’s mouth.” His laughter halted abruptly. “But you’re trapped, aren’t you? No last minute Brierson tricks to get out of this one? I’m sorry, Wil, I really am. If there were anything I could do, I would. I don’t forget my debts.”
Those were the words Wil had been hoping to hear. “There’s nothing you can do for me, Rober. Our bluff in this van is good for just a few minutes, but we could all use a little charity just now.”
The other looked nonplussed.
“Look, I’ll bet you have plenty of aircraft and armor going through final checkout at the Bellevue plant. And I know you have ammunition stocks. Between MSP and Justice, Inc. and a few other police services, we have enough war buffs to man them. At least we have enough to make these New Mexicans think twice.”
But Richardson was shaking his head. “I’m a charitable man, Wil. If I had such things to loan, MSP could have some for the asking. But you see, we’ve all been a bit outsmarted here. The New Mexicans—and people I now think are fronting for them—have options on the next four months of my production. You see what I mean? It’s one thing to help people I like and another to break a contract—especially when reliability has always been one of my most important selling points.”
Wil nodded. So much for that brilliant idea.
“And it may turn out for the best, Wil,” Richardson continued quietly. “I know your loudmouth friend won’t believe this, coming from me, but I think the Midwest might now be best off not to fight. We both know the invasion can’t stick, not in the long run. It’s just a question of how many lives and how much property is going to be destroyed in
the meantime, and how much ill feeling is going to be stored up for the future. Those New Mexicans deserve to get nuked and all the rest, but that could steel them for a holy war, like they’ve been fighting along the Colorado for so long. On the other hand, if you let them come in and take a whack at ‘governing’—why, in twenty years, you’ll have them converted into happy anarchists.”
Wil smiled in spite of himself. Richardson was certainly the prime example of what he was talking about. Wil knew the old autocrat had originally been an agent of Aztlán, sent to prepare the Northwest for invasion. “Okay, Rober. I’ll think about it. Thanks for talking.”
Richardson seemed to have guessed Wil’s phantom position on his porch. His dark eyes stared intensely into Wil’s. “Take care of yourself, Wili.”
The cool, northern playground wavered for a second, like a dream of paradise, then vanished, replaced by the hard reality of dark plastic, glimmering displays, and unconscious New Mexicans.
What now, Lieutenant?
Calling Rober had been his only real idea. He could call MSP, but he had nothing helpful to tell them. He leaned on the console, his hands sliding slickly across his sweating face. Why not just do as Rober suggested? Give up and let the force of history take care of things.
No
.
First of all, there’s no such thing as “the force of history,” except as it existed in the determination and imagination of individuals. Government had been a human institution for thousands of years; there was no reason to believe the New Mexicans would fall apart without some application of physical force. Their actions had to be shown to be impractically expensive.
And there was another, more personal reason. Richardson talked as though this invasion were something special, something that transcended commerce and courts and contracts. That was wrong. Except for their power and their self-righteousness, the New Mexicans were no different from some chopper gang marauding MSP customers. And if he and MSP let them take over, it would be just as much a default. As with Rober, reliability was one of MSP’s strongest selling points.
So MSP had to keep fighting. The only question was, what could he and Al and Jim do now?
Wil twisted around to look at the exterior view mounted by the hatch. It was a typically crass design flaw that the view was independent of the van’s computers and couldn’t be displayed except at the doorway.
There wasn’t much to see. The division HQ was dispersed, and the van itself sat in the bottom of a ravine. The predominant impression was of smoking foliage and yellow limestone. He heard the keening of
light turbines.
Oh boy
. Three overland cars were coming their way. He recognized the sergeant he had talked to a few minutes earlier. If there was anything left to do, he’d better do it now.
He glanced around the van. Strong was a high presidential advisor. Was that worth anything? Wil tried to remember. In Aztlán, with its feudal setup, such a man might be very important. The safety of just a few leaders was the whole purpose of that government. The New Mexicans were different. Their rulers were elected; there were reasonable laws of succession, and people like Strong were probably expendable. Still, there was an idea here: Such a state was something like an enormous corporation, with the citizens as stockholders. The analogy wasn’t perfect—no corporation could use the coercion these people practiced on their own. And there were other differences. But still. If the top people in such an enormous organization were threatened, it would be enormously more effective than if, say, the board of directors of MSP were hassled. There were at least ten police services as powerful as MSP in the ungoverned lands, and many of them subcontracted to smaller firms.
The question, then, was how to get their hands on someone like Hastings Martinez or this General Crick. He punched up an aerial view from somewhere south of the combat area. A train of clouds had spread southeast from the Schwartz farm. Otherwise, the air was faintly hazy. Thunderheads hung at the northern horizon. The sky had that familiar feel to it. Topeka Met Service confirmed the feeling: This was tornado weather.
Brierson grimaced. He had known that all day. And somewhere in the back of his mind, there had been the wild hope that the tornados would pick the right people to land on. Which was absurd: Modern science could kill tornadoes, but no one could direct them.
Modern science can kill tornadoes
. He swallowed. There was something he could do—if there was time. One call to headquarters was all he needed.
Outside, there was pounding on the door and shouting. More ominous, he heard a scrabbling noise, and the van swayed slightly on its suspension: Someone was climbing onto the roof. Wil ignored the footsteps above him, and asked the satellite link for a connection to MSP. The black and gold Michigan State logo had just appeared when the screen went dead. Wil tapped futilely at emergency codes, then looked at the exterior view again. A hard-faced major was standing next to the van.
Wil turned on the audio and interrupted the other. “We just got sound working here, Major. What’s up?”
This stopped the New Mexican, who had been halfway through shouting his message at them. The officer stepped back from the van and continued in more moderate tones. “I was saying there’s no fallout
problem.” Behind him, one of the troopers was quietly barfing into the bushes. There might be no fallout, but unless the major and his men got medical treatment soon, they would be very sick soldiers. “There’s no need for you to stay buttoned up.”
“Major, we’re just about ready to go back on the air. I don’t want to take any chances.”
“Who am I speaking to?”
“Ed Strong. Special Advisor to the President.” Wil spoke the words with the same ponderous importance the real Ed Strong might have used.
“Yes, sir. May I speak with Colonel Alvarez?”
“Alvarez?” Now that was a man the major must know. “Sorry, he got the corner of an equipment cabinet in the head. He hasn’t come to yet.”
The officer turned and gave the sergeant a sidelong look. The noncom shook his head slightly. “I see.” And Wil was afraid that he really did. The major’s mouth settled into a thin line. He said something to the noncom, then walked back to the cars.
Wil turned back to the other displays. It was a matter of seconds now. That major was more than suspicious. And without the satellite transmitter, Brierson didn’t have a chance of reaching East Lansing or even using the loudmouth channels. The only comm links he had that didn’t go through enemy nodes were the local phone bands. He could just reach Topeka Met. They would understand what he was talking about. Even if they wouldn’t cooperate, they would surely pass the message back to headquarters. He ran the local directory. A second passed and he was looking at a narrowband black-and-white image. A young, good-looking male sat behind an executive-sized desk. He smiled dazzlingly and said, “Topeka Meteorological Service, Customer Relations. May I help you?”
“I sure hope so. My name’s Brierson, Michigan State Police.” Wil found the words tumbling out, as if he had been rehearsing this little speech for hours. The idea was simple, but there were some details. When he finished, he noticed the major coming back toward the van. One of his men carried comm gear.
The receptionist at Topeka Met frowned delicately. “Are you one of our customers, sir?”
“No, damn it. Don’t you watch the news? You got four hundred tanks coming down Old70 toward Topeka. You’re being invaded, man—as in
going out of business!”
The young man shrugged in a way that indicated he never bothered with the news. “A gang invading Topeka? Sir, we are a
city,
not some farm community. In any case, what you want us to do with our tornado killers is clearly improper. It would be—”
“Listen,” Wil interrupted, his voice placating, almost frightened. “At least send this message on to the Michigan State Police. Okay?”
The other smiled the same dazzling, friendly smile that had opened the conversation. “Certainly, sir.” And Wil realized he had lost. He was talking to a moron or a low-grade personality simulator; it didn’t matter much which. Topeka Met was like a lot of companies—it operated with just enough efficiency to stay in business. Damn the luck.
The voices from the exterior pickup were faint but clear, “—whoever they are, they’re transmitting over the local phone bands, sir.” It was an enlisted man talking to the New Mexican major. The major nodded and stepped toward the van.

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