“People will protest. Like crazy!”
“They’ll get used to it. They’ll get real happy when they see what we save them in taxes, crime protection, and other ways. Folks’re fed up with laws that don’t work, rich lawyers, whimsical judges, and crooks that wriggle through the system like worms through a dog’s gut! Our penal system’s as outdated as the Bastille! We’re working with Outram’s allies in Congress to push some changes through. We may need amendments to the Constitution to do it, but we’ll get it done. Everything legal, one hundred gubbin’ percent.”
“Extreme…”
“Yeah. Draconian. I like that word. It’s what America… the world… needs: tough love.”
“You really should strain this through Eighty-Five a few more times before you bottle it!”
“We have. Eighty-Five predicts acceptance within five years.”
“Um. You… and it… could still be wrong.” Lessing wanted to rub his cheek, but that would hurt.
Wrench halted before a huge, double door whose leaves were seamless sheets of burnished copper. He threw out his arms dramatically and cried, “Open, sesame!” To his companions he whispered: “Doesn’t matter what you say. The voice-print’s what counts.”
“Did you know about these changes?” Lessing murmured to Liese as they followed Wrench inside.
“Not everything. I… my staff… busy. Popularize the Party. Dom.”
“‘Dorn’ will have to do a heap of explaining to convince the folks down home: a police state that makes the Soviet Union’s Gulag look as laid back as a Banger snuffy-doo orgy!”
Liese bridled. “Totalitarian state not necessarily cruel or brutal! Good government doesn’t harm good citizens. Solves social problems. Helps economy. Deters crime. Efficient aid for needy, old, sick, mentally ill. Benefits outweigh restrictions!”
“You’re great at summing up the Party platform, love. But people will balk at government by super-computer! It’s not cricket, as the British say.”
Wrench had paused inside the ornate reception room to stare into another blink-box beside a glass door leading to a complex of inner offices. He grinned back at them. “Not cricket! That’s just it, Lessing: we’re not playing cricket; we’re talking law! Nobody mentioned good table manners or the Code of the West! Fair is protecting the citizens; unfair is letting the wolves go on munching on the sheep!”
“Logically you’re right. But people don’t always see things logically. It’s people you’re dealing with.”
Wrench sniffed. “People need education. Then they’ll see we’re doing what’s best for our ethnos. For the world, man!”
Wrench’s office was austere, almost monkish: a long room with one glass wall overlooking the dizzy drop down the face of the pyramid, past roofs and wharves and ferryboats to Elliott Bay. Lessing glimpsed work tables, swing lights, green-glazed cabinets, and half a dozen unoccupied desks. A niche in one of the inner walls contained a photographic hologram of children playing volleyball before a brick school building. It was now after four in the afternoon, and the staff had gone home.
“Hello, Cadre-Commander Wren,” Eighty-Five’s smooth “Melissa Willoughby” voice emerged eerily from nowhere. “Program Director Meisinger, Mister Lessing.”
Wrench said, “Access, encode, protect, and create a safe file Name it Goddard-com. Find Bill Goddard.”
“PHASE-Commander Goddard is in his office in Bethesda, Maryland. Do you require further location coordinates?”
“No. Establish contact.”
The hologram of the schoolchildren blinked out, and Bill Goddard appeared in its place. He sat at a cluttered work table, surrounded by computer terminals, communications gear, and half-a-dozen PHASE personnel, among whom Lessing recognized Chuck Gillem and Dan Groto from Ponape. Plastic plates, coffee cups, and an empty, orange-splattered pizza carton littered the files and documents in front of Goddard and his crew. Eighty-Five had caught PHASE in the middle of a supper-cum-staff meeting. Goddard looked up at the camera, surprise evident upon his fleshy features.
“Well, well!” He leaned back in his chair. “Mary and two of her little lambs!”
Wrench started to make a sarcastic reply, but Lessing cut him short. “Bill, can we talk? Without the personalities?” Goddard pursed his lips. “Why not?”
All three spoke at once, but Lessing got the floor. “We have a problem.” He related what Easley had told Wrench.
Goddard shook his grizzled head. “You’re an amazing dinker, Lessing. What kind of ka-ka do you smoke? Of course PHASE is screening lib-reb prisoners in California… for the best reasons in the world! Some of ’em are criminals with records long enough to step on, some are escapees, some are assassins who’d make a bee-line for Outram or Mulder… or you… if we let ’em go! Some are Vizzies… the same lovely bunch who dropped Starak on us! Remember? What do you expect? Of course PHASE is looking at ’em!”
“Okay, okay,” Wrench tried to mollify him. “But without consulting Lessing, here? Or Mulder? Or Outram?”
“Shit. We don’t need consultation. PHASE has Federal police powers. And we did inform your guys on the scene. Check with Holm.”
“Told you so,” Lessing muttered to Wrench.
“Anyway, we don’t grab off many of your lib-rebs. We question them, pull out those on the wanted list, and hand your guys legal warrants. I guess we’ve picked up a couple hundred of their laugh-able ‘soldier boys’ that way. No more. The rest we gave back to you… and you’re welcome to ‘em.”
Wrench bit his lip. “I was told that PHASE was grabbing off a lot of lib-rebs. More than a couple hundred, anyway. Not all military, either, but civilians and families.”
“Gub it, you are crazy! No such thing! Why would we want ‘em? We don’t have camps… tents… personnel.” His eyes widened. “And don’t tell me we’re taking ‘em off and shooting ‘em! Don’t try to pin that on PHASE!”
A voice off -camera said something, and Goddard grunted. “Hell, I’m told that our guys in California think you’re disappearing some lib-reb boogies! Quite a few of ‘em never made it to Oregon. We were about to ask you where the bus slopped.”
“What?” Lessing was baffled. “I don’t…!”
Wrench said, “Eighty-Five? You listening? Dammit, of course you are! Compare Cadre lists of lib-reb P.O.W.s taken in Sacramento with arrival rosters at the reorientation centers in Oregon. Print out any names not on both lists… and check for reasons why.”
“You should’ve done that before you came hollering at me!” Goddard complained. He addressed Eighty-Five also: “Compare those Cadre lists with PHASE files of lib-rebs taken into custody in California and Oregon.”
It took less than ten seconds. A box appeared in the corn-link hologram to the left of Goddard’s face. Names scrolled past.
“Hard-copy that!” Wrench commanded. A printer began to whine behind him.
Goddard pointed at his own screen. “Jesus, look! Those’re mostly Jewish names… Rosenbaum, Siegel, Greenberg, Silverstein, Levine, Aaron…”
“Isn’t Daniel Jacoby the producer who made Train to Darkness… the movie that came out a few years ago about World War If?” Lessing asked. “You know, the Treblinka camp… Bella Gold starred in it?”
“Yes.” Liese reached past him for the printout. “Reuben Meyer. Financier. Corporate raider.”
“Marvin Weisskopf!” Wrench dug fingers into his wavy, brown hair. “Hey, I met that guy! Theoretical physics professor. M.I.T.! Eighty-Five, provide dossiers on these people!”