CHAPTER SEVEN
"Available records show that no fewer than 55 slave revolts occurred at sea between 1700 and 1845. During the height of the slave period, the 200 years from 1664 to 1864, there are recorded accounts of at least 109 slave insurrections which occurred within the continental U.S. Since it was customary to suppress all news and information concerning revolts lest they become infectious, it is reasonable to assume that the reported cases were of some magnitude, that very many cases were not reported, and that some cases which were reported have not yet been made available to research...the rate of infanticide was high. Suicide became a problem of such magnitude as to require the slave owners to devise 'the strongest arguments possible' (supported by religious and social taboos) to reduce the rate of self-destruction. Sabotage of livestock, machinery and agricultural produce was not unknown...Running away was a form of protest so common as to have been considered a disease. Southern physicians described its symptoms in the journals of the period and gave it the name 'monomania.'..."
—C. Eric Lincoln, The Black Muslims in America
"The revolutionary despises and hates present-day social morality in all its forms...all soft and enervating feelings of friendship, love, gratitude, even honour, must be stifled in him by an icy passion for the revolutionary cause...day and night, he must have only one thought, one aim: merciless destruction."
—Nechayev, The Revolutionary Catechism (Nechayev achieved little or no success himself; his only documented murder was of one of his own recruits; he died in prison.. )
Russell decided it was the finest limo money could buy. Its passenger compartment was large enough to accomodate all five of them in superb comfort. Thus laden, and with driver and shotgun up front, its suspension handled Manhattan pavement well enough to create the sensation that they were floating through the night. It was climate controlled, colour coordinated, softly lit, outfitted with the very latest and best gadgetry, and (he discovered at Michael's invitation) it made a genuinely excellent cup of coffee. The windows were one-way and bulletproof. From the sound the doors had made in closing Russell guessed the car would withstand rockets.
Physically he felt awful. A man who has drunk his way up to Level Three ought to sleep soon afterward, and Russell was not a kid any more. Psychically he should have felt just as bad; the day had been traumatic enough for anyone.
But he was fiercely proud that he had succeeded in discharging his obligation to Michael, had won a measure of respect from Jerome in the process. Now he was committed to God knew what for God knew how long.
Whatever else it was, it was exciting, and it struck him that for several years now, the only exciting things in his life had been his wife's performances and his daughter's report cards.
The man called Tom had been formally introduced to him as General Thomas Worthing. He was in his late fifties, lean and trim, with distinctly negroid features and the air of a man who was used to command. But he deferred to Michael. Motormouth was a cartoon giant; his skin was even darker than Michael's, and he looked like a man who could punt a fire hydrant up through a second story window if the need arose. Clearly he was a devoted bodyguard, and Russell suspected he was quicker than he looked. He had not yet uttered a word.
There was no conversation on the way downtown. Michael faced forward with his eyes closed, his face peaceful and relaxed. Russell sat facing him with coffee in one hand and Dena's hand in the other. General Worthing was tense, stared out the window and chainsmoked nonfilter cigarettes. Twice he used a phone with an excellent hush attachment to conduct lengthy conversations unheard.
Motormouth seemed both relaxed and alert; his eyes watched everything and everyone but Michael. There was a sense of history in the car; the image that leaped into Russell's mind was, like being on the train with Lenin, approaching Moscow. He remained silent partly from a feeling that anything he might say would be inane in this context, from a reluctance to interrupt Michael's thoughts or absence of them at this time. Most people are the stars of their own personal movie, but somehow Russell knew that he was only a minor supporting character here.
And what was he supporting?
They took Lenox Avenue down past the Martin Luther King, Jr. Towers, entered Central Park by the Harlem Lake and followed the East Drive down through the park. Just as they passed over the second transverse road, the limo pulled over and stopped. There was no other traffic. There were no functional lights nearby. Driver and shotgun got out first and made sure the area was secure before tapping on the rear window. Motormouth opened the door and got out, seemed to sniff the air before stepping aside to let the others emerge. The driver got back in and pulled silently away.
They stepped over a small stone wall and went down a short steep slope, General Worthing in the lead. The great bulk of the Metropolitan Museum of Art was visible through a stand of trees ahead and to their left, a few hundred meters distant. Between it and them stood a one-story shed the size of a two car garage, surrounded by a high strong electrified fence. There was a sign Russell could not read in the dark, but he made out the trefoil radiation warning. He guessed it was phony, there to discourage prowlers and winos. Motormouth disarmed and unlocked the fence and let them all in, then locked and charged it again. There was enough moonlight to show a heavy padlock, and an oddity that caught Russell's attention.
There were three tiny round windows in the door, side by side at head height, each the size of a half dollar. The outer two could have been lookout ports, but what was the middle one for?
Ignoring the padlock, Motormouth stepped up to the door and placed his eyes against the two outer ports. As he did so all three glowed soft red, giving the edges of his shaven head a rosy highlighting. There was an almost inaudible click, a sigh of pressurized air escaping, and the door slid aside, padlock and all.
Now Russell understood. The outer ports checked retina prints, the middle one was the business end of a laser.
Inside was a room, empty and quite featureless except for a door in the far wall, large enough to admit a one-ton truck.
Perhaps twenty people could have stood in here without rubbing elbows. They filed in one at a time, Motormouth last. Russell expected total darkness when the door slid shut, but got the exact opposite: the room suddenly lit up brightly. "This is an elevator," Michael warned them. He touched a part of the wall that seemed indistinguishable from any other, did something with his fingers too quickly for Russell to follow. "Here goes." The floor dropped slowly.
Russell estimated the descent at over sixteen meters. They stepped out of the car and into a much larger room, were met by two armed guards who saluted General Worthing and nodded to Michael. The general returned the salute and Michael bowed to both guards and greeted them by name.
"These are Russell and Dena Grant. They are my friends, but they are not to leave here until everyone else does or I say so. And if Mustapha Khan asks when he arrives, no white man has come out of this elevator all night. Catch?"
"Yes, Michael." Neither seemed to find anything odd about Michael having a secret white visitor tonight.
Russell's designer's eye took in a number of unobtrusive details and put them together. In all well constructed sword and sorcery tales, there is, between the passage from the outside world and the treasure chamber, a room whose sole purpose is to assassinate anyone who attempts to pass through it. This was the high-tech version of that room.
There were inconspicuous laser apertures at knee and chest height, gas dispersion grilles along the baseboards—glancing up Russell saw that the whole ceiling could be brought down in chunks. He assumed there were other, completely indetectible systems.
They passed through another door on the far side of the room, found themselves in a huge airlock. No pressure cycling was necessary; from the way the air behaved when the inner door was opened Russell deduced that the space they were about to enter was very slightly overpressured, like a computer room.
Indeed, the chamber they entered looked like a cross between a big computer room, a television control room, and the fire control room of a Leviathan-class nuclear sub.
It had started as a vast cylinder Iying on its side. The cylinder was enormous, as big in diameter as the Lincoln Tunnel and much longer than it was wide. A hardwood floor had been laid down, and the resulting space filled to capacity with a great deal of equipment and more than three dozen people, all shaved bald. Each wore an armband whose edges were scalloped in a curious pattern; the armbands came in several colors. There were two very big Cray IV computers, state of the art; a dozen or more PCs and laptops and a network server; a sophisticated phone switchboard with ten operators; banks of dozens of VDT screens, some lit and some dark; console after console of equipment whose purpose Russell did not comprehend. Nearly all the busy workers stopped what they were doing when Michael entered, and he bowed to them all. Not one of them returned the bow.
"Good evening, brothers and sisters," he said, his voice filling the great room without straining. "The Night of Power is at hand. We fight now for our people. For our honour. For our ancestors, and for our children. Bless you all." It was not a speech, just a statement.
The cheer was loud and happy and filled even that large room. Michael passed among them, contriving to touch each of them and make brief eye contact as he went without stopping. Russell noted that his own white skin drew only one or two angry stares: Michael's people trusted his judgment.
A gasketed door led to a long corridor whose ceiling was as high as that of the room they had just left. This was storage space, lockers and cabinets and shelves and bins of God knew what. There were also several restrooms; through an open curtain Russell saw a waterless Clivis toilet like the one in his country cabin in Nova Scotia.
Through another door was another large cylindrical room, this one laid out as a TV studio with a rostrum, three robot cameras, and few dozen seats for spectators. By now Russell had figured out that they were in some kind of giant underground tunnel, but he was having difficulty believing it. It seemed impossible that a revolutionary militant group could have the funds to construct a tunnel of this size, let alone have managed to do so in secret. Moreover, subtle subconscious cues told him that it was old, decades old at least, no matter how ultramodern the furnishings. The air, though cooled and circulated, did not taste canned, which meant air exchange with the city above—no, there was simply no way it could have been built in secret. And where did Con Ed send the power bill for the TV studio, or for that matter for that giant War Room they had passed through? Either of those two Cray mainframes would have been adequate to handle NASA's traffic load; they were top of the line.
In college Russell had been on reasonably friendly terms with three or four black militants. Only once had one of them displayed property of any real value to him: a Kalashnikov AK-47 with sniperscope. Russell could remember a Black Panther fundraiser, an afternoon of food and entertainment that had netted perhaps two hundred dollars.
This organization had money to burn, it seemed. Ever since he had left Garvey Park and seen the limo pull up to the curb Russell had been feeling his preconceptions twisted like taffy. Now he had reached the point at which he was considering doubting his senses.
I am in Halifax, lying back in a hot tub and dreaming of what the upcoming trip to New York will be like. And I have a sick imagination.
As he bent his head to step through another gasketed, gas-tight door, Russell caught sight of the dried blood on his pants, and the feeling of unreality vanished.
They passed successively through a dining hall, a kitchen/commissary, a short washroom corridor, sleeping quarters for sixty which reminded Russell powerfully of a submarine he had once spent time in, an infirmary, and another storage area, emerging at last into a large room laid out as an executive lounge. The only furnishing not designed to provide physical comfort was a large video screen hanging on the right hand wall, with attlendant control console. Ignoring all the powered and unpowered chairs, four women were standing at parade rest as Michael's party entered. Their armbands were all white.
They snapped crisply to attention.
Between them, sprawled across a couch, was a naked man in great distress. His wrists and ankles were cuffed and a plastic sheet had been thoughtfully placed under him so that he would not stain the couch. His inhalations were long shuddering whispers, his exhalations were short explosive grunts. The one good eye rolled without tracking anything.
Dena gasped.
Three of the women were carrying automatic weapons; the fourth had only a holstered sidearm. She was in her forties, shaven-headed like everyone else in this tunnel, and projected authority and competence. She wore a single earplug, louvered to let ambient sound through, and a nickel-sized throat mike. She stepped forward and spoke crisply to General Worthing.
"We got him, General. Lieutenant Jonas Robinson. Just as you ordered, we traced the outgoing and it led to his line.
We took him cleanly—I don't believe anyone else in the War Room noticed—and he did not get off a second call."
"Well done, Colonel Moore. Could he have any confederates in this command?"
"No, sir." She glanced down at the traitor. "I could be wrong, but I'm positive. Mustapha Khan is due to arrive in twelve minutes, and is reported on schedule so far."
"Good."
Michael spoke. "Was all that hurting really necessary, Trezessa?"
She did not flinch. "Yes, Michael. The drugs don't work on him. We stopped the moment he cracked. He was tough.
Religious fanatic."
"I see." Michael's face looked no sadder than it always did.
"Kill him painlessly, Colonel," Worthing told her, "and then wrap him up and put him in the disposal area."
"Yes, sir." She produced a syrette, bent, and injected the man on the upper arm, and he died instantly and unspectacularly. The other three helped her roll up and carry him out.
"You know, Tom," Michael said mournfully, "I think that's where we misjudged Mustapha, right there. I think he's a religious fanatic."
"Come on, Michael. He believes in Allah like I believe in Jupiter—that stuff is just to fool the sheep."
"No, I think Mustapha is that rare thing: a powerful religious leader who isn't a hypocritical opportunist. It explains a lot. We've been assuming that reason, rational self-interest, would guide his actions. We never allowed for orders from Allah. Why else would he take such a stupid risk, now?"
"Mmmm. Maybe you're right. I'll bear it in mind."
"The question is: will he really still come?"
"Let's wear his sandals," Worthing said. "Mustapha gets a message from Robinson that a white man who knows about the Night of Power has a dying message from Willie Ray Brown that he wants to give you face to face. Mustapha knows what the message has to be, so he tries to have Grant hit. But nothing comes back from the hit, no killers, no car, no news—the gunfire takes out the central processor and that arcade goes silent, even Robinson can't tell him what happened. The TV and radio news say a white man died in that firefight, but he knows that we have brothers and sisters in the media, and anyway it might not have been the right white man. Sooner or later someone should make it to another arcade or other terminal and report back up the line, and Robinson can intercept that and pass the word.
But Robinson is late calling. Mustapha's in the dark."
"So maybe we know he's a traitor," Michael said. "Why take the risk of coming as planned?"
"If we do know, his only possible move is to drop everything and flee Manhattan tonight, Allah or no Allah.
It's even too late to betray us to The Man, and there's no way he can stay on this island and live past tomorrow sundown. But if he leaves, he leaves everything. However the Night of Power turns out, he loses all he has. He can't do that when he doesn't even know for sure it's necessary."
"But if we don't know—"
"If we don't know, he has two options. Abort the hit and cooperate with us as he has pledged—or carry out the hit.
Which one would depend on how suspicious of him we seem. Or what Allah tells him, I suppose."
Colonel Moore was back. "You understand that, Trezessa?" Michael said to her. "When Mustapha arrives, what he wants most is to find that he is an honoured guest, welcomed with joy and shared anticipation. Don't lay it on too thick, he'll be hyperalert for that."
"I understand, Michael."
"I'll greet him here, we'll peel his guards off him, and Tom and I'll take him and his shadow Bismillah into Tom's room for tea. Not less than ten and not more than twenty minutes later, Mustapha and Bismillah will die. If you hear them cry out or me call for you, take out his guards at once."
"It will be done, Michael." She looked savage. "They soil the Night."
"Don't expose yourself unnecessarily, Trezessa. I need you this night."
"Yes, Michael."
Russell and Dena had watched and heard all this in silence. Now Michael turned to them.
"Children," he said, "I have to get you out of the way. The next passage uptunnel contains living quarters for four. We will be using the near left room, so I'm going to put you in the far right. That's my room. I'm afraid it will be quite dull, there's nothing much in there. But it'll only be for a short while, and you should be safe there whatever happens."
"Whatever you say, Michael," Russell told him, and Dena nodded.
"I still say we should nail him as soon as he gets off the elevator," Worthing said to Michael. "It's insane to let him have a chance at you."
"No, Tom. I have to face him. For one thing I need to know how far the rot spreads. We need the Muslims behind us; most of them are good people, and there has to be a smooth transfer of power tonight. I want to know how many layers down we have to go to find someone we can trust."
Worthing looked frustrated. "You're right—but I don't have to like it. You watch that bastard, he's tricky."
"Tom, better this war go forward without me than go forward headed by Mustapha. He just can't put it over. He thinks he's got God as a backstop. Russell, Dena, this way."
They followed Michael, accompanied by the everpresent Motormouth, into a short corridor with two doorways on either side. They went straight to the far right door. A little further on, the corridor opened out into a small area of full tunnel-width, which ended in a heavy armour wall. Russell could see that the great door set in it was another airlock.
Beyond it somewhere must lay the corpse of Jonas Robinson. This was the end of the inhabited section, but the immense tunnel itself went on further, beyond that bulkhead....
Several things clicked together in his mind. "Michael?"
"Yes, son?"
"This is Tunnel Three, isn't it?"
Michael looked surprised, then respectful. He smiled.
"How do you know about that?"
"I was invited to work on it. I'm a designer, and they wanted an inexpensive self-cleaning system. I sniffed around, decided the whole project was doomed, and declined the job—but I did hear they got a good chunk of work done before the money ran out. Fifty years and more they've spent on this hole in the ground."
Michael nodded. "One of the great boondoggles of our time. Goes up a ways past the Harlem River and just stops.
It wasn't being used, so I decided to borrow it."
"You'll give it back when you're done with it," Russell said ironically.
"Oh, no. There won't be any way to do that. I'm afraid I must lock you people in, now, until my meeting with Mustapha Khan has ended. I don't mean to confine you, but to make sure Mustapha doesn't stumble across you. He must not know that a white man has spoken with me tonight.
The room is soundproof. Someone will let you out within twenty minutes, however the interview goes down. All right?"
"You're asking me if it's all right with me?"
"That's right."
"Okay, Michael." Russell hesitated. "Good luck."
"Good luck, Michael," Dena said, speaking for the first time since they had left the park.
He smiled sadly at them. "Thank you both. We'll talk later."
He opened the door and ushered them inside, locked it behind them.
=
Russell cleared his throat.
Dena looked at him. His Dena, bald like all these strangers. There was time to talk at last. There was too much to say, nowhere to begin. He glanced around for distraction.
There was not much to work with. Except for a tatami, a small sculpture, and two books, Michael's personal room was utterly bare. Nonetheless it somehow felt lived in—scent, perhaps? Some subliminal clue. The sculpture was a miniature replica of Rodin's "Caryatid Who Has Fallen Under Her Stone." The two books were Clavell's translation of Sun Tzu's Art of War, and a November 1980 edition of the Marine Corps manual on "Military Operations on Urbanized Terrain (MOUT)." Both looked well thumbed.
He turned back to Dena. His instinct was to break the tension with a wisecrack, but he couldn't think of one.
From her face he knew that she too was looking for words.
Neither could find any that were adequate.
And then somehow, to Russell's astonishment she was in his arms and they were on the floor making love.
If he had considered the idea rationally, he might have decided to go ahead with it—surely it must take Michael and his friends at least ten minutes to kill several men and return—or perhaps the very cold bloodedness of that thought might have turned him off. But he never considered it rationally. He had seen death four times in the last twenty-four hours, and the third time he and Dena had nearly died themselves, and few things make a person hornier than a close brush with death. It simply happened, without their having to think about it, the strategic parts of their clothing melted out of the way as if by television.
And there the resemblance to television ended. For in a TV movie it would have been the best sex either of them had ever had, magically healing all wounds and solving all problems, a mindless celebration of their survival and reaffirmation of their love. But once the physical joining of their loins had been effortlessly accomplished, their minds woke up and it stopped being effortless.
Part of it, of course, was simply that they had had sex only a few hundred years—God, only a few hours!—ago. There was always a chance that someone might come in. They were both of them both physically and mentally tired, and both were subconsciously concerned for their daughter.
Over all these things they might have triumphed. But there was unfinished business between them, and it intruded.
Dena came as quickly as ever, perhaps quicker, but less forcefully, and as she did so he felt his erection flag.
Suddenly uncertain that he could make it, but feeling somehow that it was essential he do so, he reached for a fantasy image. What surfaced were a few scenes from the magazine Dena had thrown in his face earlier that evening.
They worked, after a fashion. He achieved a dry sneeze of an orgasm, and even managed to time it with her second, but it left him frustrated, wishing vaguely that he had let his erection wilt and tried again at a later time, or faked a climax. He hugged her fiercely tight, even after he had rolled his weight off her.
After a time it came to him that outside this room perhaps at this moment, men he had never met were dying, because of a message that he had delivered. It was a sobering thought. Obligations yet undischarged...
"Dena, I'm so—"
"Shhh."
"But I should never have—"
"Hush. Neither should I."
"But you don't—"
"I've had a lot of time to think it over. Tell me if I miss anything. I should have realized you didn't have a chance to look through that magazine—you must have been hard-pressed to buy it at all. You shouldn't have mentioned it until you did have a chance to look it over. I should have told you before shaving my head, or at least have sprung it on you better; you should have handled it better. You shouldn't have picked a fight over that knifing you saw; I shouldn't have let you. I shouldn't have let Jerome into the apartment; you should have known I wouldn't do so without a good reason. You're unreasonably threatened by Jerome; I've been stupid in not realizing that before. Did I leave anything out?"
"Not that I can think of right now. Do we forgive us?"
"Might as well. We're going to be together the rest of our lives. We might as well be on friendly terms."
"I agree." He hesitated, undecided whether to speak. "But first I want to tell you why I am unreasonably threatened by Jerome."
"Russell, you don't have—"
"If we're going to forgive us, we have to know the whole story. I am threatened by Jerome because he's a former lover of yours, because he was a significant one, because he got under your skin, because he left.you before you were ready and so is filed under 'Unfinished Business' in your heart. I am very threatened by Jerome because you are physically close to him in a sweaty state of seminudity every day. These things I should be able to handle; I've handled similar situations with you before. I am unreasonably threatened by Jerome because he is black."
"Oh, Russell—"
"Apparently my subconscious mind bought a piece of the ancient shibboleth that black men are sexier, more sensual and primitive and powerful than white men. I'm being as honest as I can. I think I could handle his being younger, better looking, a dancer—but he's black, and that throws me."
She averted her eyes. "What about black women?" she asked. "Am I sexier than the white women you've known?"
"Yes."
"And is that because I'm black?"
He closed his eyes. "Dena, I don't have enough data points.
I've only had one other dark skinned lover, Indian rather than African, and she was, well, average. I don't know how much of your sensuality and energy are genetic, and how much is uniquely you." He hesitated. "But I do know that from time to time people we meet give me a look that says, 'He must be one hell of a man to hold onto a black woman.' I didn't think I believed that. But I see now that I have been allowing myself to feel pride when I saw that look, and so I've bought a piece of the theory. Somewhere in the slimier recesses of my head, I think I've been wearing, quietly and happily, a little sign saying, ' Honorary Black Man,' and walking just a little taller because of it. And of course the flip side of that coin is the fear that one day a real black man will come along and steal you away."
"Russell," she said after a small silence, "how do your first wife and I compare in bed? On a scale of ten?" She met his eyes.
"I can't answer that," he said without hesitation. "I'm not trying to weasel out, Dena, but the question can't be answered. Janice was receptive more often, she didn't have a dance career to run so sex was a more important component of her life. But she could never have matched your inventiveness or enthusiasm, or your limberness. She had bigger tits, you have a...what I'm trying to say is, you're both tens—on different scales." He tucked his penis back into his pants and zipped them.
Dena dried herself with a single tissue. "Okay. Now suppose it turned out that Janice was living in the apartment above ours. She didn't really die in that plane crash, just used the opportunity to disappear and take a new identity. So she represents unfinished business to you.
And she's a ten, and she's right upstairs while I'm off at work. Are you going to leave me and go back to her—assuming she wants you to? I know how much she meant to you, how good a marriage you two had. Would you leave me for her if that were a possibility?"
"No," he said at once.
"Why not?"
"On one level, because I owe you loyalty. But on a purely selfish level, I've invested too much time and sweet effort in our marriage to risk losing it, even for something else as good. It'd take something twice as good to seriously tempt me, and as far as I know there is no such thing."
"All right. Now, do you credit me with the same amount of morals on the one level, and intelligence on the other?"
He hesitated, and she started to cloud up. "Yes, Dena, yes of course, that's not why I'm hesitating."
"Spit it out."
"No, I would not leave you for Janice. But..."
"Speak."
"But I could plausibly imagine a combination of circumstances—innocent, understandable, forgivable circumstances—that could put us together in bed. Once. Or more. Just to see what the years had done. At least, I think you'd be nuts not to be worried about the possibility.
And..." He looked down at his lap. "And besides, your analogy assumes that Jerome isn't twice as good a lover as I am."
She pulled away, sat up, and pulled her jeans back on.
"Listen, dumb bastard, dumb bastard that I love, listen good because I am only going to go through this once with you and then I don't ever want to hear about it again. I am annoyed enough to answer your implied questions honestly, and it's up to you to live with it. I don't have enough data points for a racial analysis either. I've only had two black lovers, and one was terrible. As for you, on a scale of ten, with ruthless honesty, I rate you a nine and a half. You're always thinking, and it costs you points. But you are the most considerate and skillful and understanding sex partner I have ever had. Jerome, on the other hand—"
Russell held his breath.
"—back when we were fucking, clocked in at about—pause for suspense—about a six. Get that smile off your face, I'm not finished yet. As far as energy and gusto and—I don't know, style, he was a clear ten—he didn't have your technique or staying power, he didn't need them. But his problem was, he was totally self involved. Oh, he never left me high and dry, you know I'm quick, but he wouldn't have minded a whole lot if he had. That brought him back to a six in my book. A touch of that male arrogance can be appealing to a woman, for a time, in just that primitive way you spoke of earlier—because it's a challenge. The reason Jerome left a piece of himself under my skin is that he walked out on me before I ever got him to confront me as a person. I had it in my mind that if he ever did, I might get him up from a six to a nine or ten. But he got away clean.
"Now I've met him again, years later, and he is no longer totally self-involved. At first I thought he was, I thought all this revolutionary crap was just another hat for him to wear so people could admire how handsome he looked in it. But it isn't. He obviously has committed his life to it. I have no use for religion, but I used to almost wish he would believe in a god of some kind, something outside of himself. He does now, he believes in Michael. It makes him more of a man, do you see? He confronted me as a person tonight, risked something very important to him to warn me of danger— why, he's even confronted you as a person.
"Over the last week or so the awareness has been growing on me, unconsciously, that he is a new and better Jerome.
And yes, that has elicited the unconscious question, I wonder how high he and I would rate now, the suspicion that we'd go at least nine and a half, maybe higher. He has made no secret of wanting me, and I've made it clear that it was never ever going to happen...but I haven't kept him at arm's length the way I should have. I think I just wanted him to know, to understand what he threw away when he split on me. I think I wanted to let him just begin to get his hopes up... and then cut him off at the knees. A stupid and dangerous game, and unfair to you." She grabbed his upper arm, hard enough to make him wince. "Here comes the important part, baby. Watch my lips. It. Is. Never. Ever.
Going to happen. Never in hell. I am going to keep him at arm's length from now on. I won't risk hurting or losing you. Partly because a marriage is so much more than just sex, and you give me many many things Jerome never could. And partly because no matter how much smarter he's gotten, the highest I'd ever get him is nine point nine.
Whereas if you can ever learn to stop observing yourself all the time, you and I are going to hit fifteen some day.
Have I answered you?"
Russell found that his shoulders were knotted up to the point of pain, and forced them to relax. They would only relax so far, as though someone had taken up the tension in an invisible set-screw.
"Thank you for your honesty," he said, his voice croaking on the first two syllables. "I know it must be truth because it stings like a burning bastard." She smiled, and he smiled back. Lord God, his wife did have a beautiful smile. "Yes, you've answered me."
"One small revision. Only in bed should you learn to stop observing yourself. The way you keep yourself under careful observation the rest of the time is one of the things that keeps you lovable."
"Okay."
"What is Tunnel Three?"
It took him a moment to shift gears. "Excuse me, I don't think our retros fired at the same time. Uh— Tunnel Three is what we are in. Manhattan gets all of its water through two enormous tunnels from upstate. One is ancient, the other is twice as old. Both have chronically and desperately needed overhauling for decades— but there was no way they could possibly shut down half of New York's water for long enough to work on them. The obvious solution was to build a third tunnel— but as the Hard Times began, it looked easier and easier to just let the next administration worry about it. Tunnel Three has been in progress for fifty years, and the last work done on it was over ten years ago. You've noticed that the water in this town tastes even worse than Halifax water?"
"God, Michael's plan is bigger than I thought."
At those words Russell was stricken. It burst over him that there was a conversation he and Dena ought to have had before they mended the tear in their marriage, before making love. A subject whose urgency transcended their own personal concerns, beside which even agony was a side issue. At any moment the door was going to open and the chance would be gone—possibly forever—but he suddenly wished with all his heart that instead of shoring up their relationship he and Dena had discussed how they felt about Michael's Night of Power.
He was by no means sure how he felt himself—how could he hope to guess how Dena felt? "Dena, listen—"
And yes, the chance was gone, for there came a gentle knock.
He cursed himself for a fool. By happy accident he had been vouchsafed twenty whole minutes in which to think things through and talk them over with his partner—and he had spent them on fucking and soap opera. In Dena's eyes he read dismay matching his own.
Too late. "Yes, Michael."
The door slid back. Michael had changed into a new robe, also red but cut differently, and there was a small cut visible at the side of his neck which had been very skillfully doctored. Otherwise he seemed unchanged. His movements were unhurried, his breathing slow and regular.
It was hard to believe he had killed within the last few minutes. Was he indifferent to killing? Or worse, had he been unable to do it?
Russell found either idea upsetting. It came to him that he wanted them not to be true. He wanted, on an emotional level, to like Michael, to believe in him. Was that something to watch for and guard against? Was Russell being manipulated by charisma? Or should he trust his instincts?
"Thanks for your patience, friends. Coffee and sandwiches will be arriving in the Lounge in a few minutes. Russell, I'm having clothes fetched that I believe will fit you. It's late and you've both been through a lot, but we need to talk.
I've got some time clear now, and I won't have again for several days. Are you up to it?"
Russell was tempted to plead exhaustion, so he and Dena could talk privately first. But he dared not throw away this opportunity. He needed more data. If he could just avoid committing himself—say he needed to sleep on it—
"Up to it and for it," he said, and Dena nodded agreement.
A guard came past the doorway carrying a green body bag.
Trezessa Moore brought up the rear; she called a halt, set down her end, and gave Russell the T-shirt and cords she had in her free hand.
He saw Michael's face as he saw the body bag. The overall expression did not change, but something subtle happened at the corners of the mouth and eyes. As a child Russell had gone one summer afternoon to the home of Mr.
Raffalli, an elderly teacher he loved. Mr. Raffalli had received him with his customary elaborate courtesy, had been a gracious host, had seemed in all ways normal save that he had the same strange thing happening at the corners of his mouth and eyes. A week later Russell had learned that on that morning Mr. Raffalli's beloved cat Rainy Midnight had been hit by a van, and he had been forced to end its suffering himself.
"It's all set, Michael," Trezessa reported. "Selim Khan will be here by dawn."
"Good. Thanks. How's Anne?"
"Fine. Doc says it's greenstick. Uh—" She hesitated. "She says she wants to stay on duty. She says she's entitled."
"What do you think?"
"She really is in good shape. She shoots better left-handed than I do right-handed. I don't like being shorthanded tonight."
"Okay, that's settled. Any bad news from outside yet?"
Russell was amazed at how beautiful Trezessa was when she smiled. "Not a discouraging word, Michael."
His answering smile was much less exuberant. "Thank you, dear. Carry on." She and her companion hoisted the bag again and left. Russell stripped off his bloodstained clothes and dressed quickly.
"Has there been any word on our daughter?" Dena asked.
"Not yet," Michael said. "It's early yet."
It was necessary to make cuffs on the cords. Russell folded up the soiled clothes and tucked them under his elbow.
"Let's go."
Motormouth was just finishing a mopping of the Lounge floor. Russell recognized the colour of the water in the bucket. A long time ago he had worked as a janitor in a hospital. There were four powered armchairs; Michael turned three of them to face each other and pulled over a wheeled coffee table. He patted Motormouth's massive shoulder, and the giant smiled wordlessly and left with mop, bucket, and Russell's old clothes.
"Michael?" Dena asked as they sat, "Is Motormouth mute?"
"Not exactly. He is totally aphasic. When he was a twenty-year-old Marine, something happened to him in Lebanon. I don't suppose anyone will ever know what. He has fascinated a lot of psychologists. His intelligence is high, his reason is sharp. But he cannot understand speech, and he cannot articulate ideas in any form. He can understand simple written sentences, as long as they contain only lower-case letters. If there's a capital anywhere in the sentence, he can't read it. No one even has a theory about that. He has been my friend and bodyguard for more than ten years. He can 'read' an astonishing amount from tones of voice and body language, much more than ordinary people. A lot of people take him for mute, but nobody ever takes him for deaf or retarded."
Under any other circumstances, Russell would have been fascinated. "Michael," he said, "I'm bursting with questions, but I'm afraid to ask any."
"I know, son," Michael said at once. "This afternoon you were a law-abiding visitor from a friendly foreign country.
Now you're inextricably involved in murder and high treason, and with every answer I give you, you'll get in a little deeper. The more you know, the more trouble you're in."
"And the longer it will be before you can afford to let us go free."
"Not true. Within a week, two at the outside, I'll have no more secrets at all."
"What I really don't understand is why, on this night, you have time to talk with us."
"Russell, I've been planning this night, with the assistance of a few hundred very good brains, for over twenty five years. I did budget time for last-minute disasters, but Mustapha Khan was the only one that's come up. And I find that I feel like talking. To both of you. You are a black and a white who have learned to live together without hate.
You're both Canadians—though you were raised in this country, weren't you, Russell? You both have a personal interest in what is going on tonight, but you're both in a sense disinterested parties. And you are enough of a technical man to appreciate some of the fine points."
Russell was impressed. Michael could not have known he was a technical man without having him very efficiently checked out—in a short time, after office hours, across a border.
"Do you mind telling me what your politics are, Russell?"
He suppressed the temptation to give the answer Rick gave Major Strasser in Casablanca. "I'm a rational anarchist," he said, "if that conveys anything to you."
To his surprise Michael smiled and nodded. "Yes, I know that book. As a matter of fact, I've borrowed from it heavily. I stole his cell system, for one thing— the first breakthrough in revolutionary theory in centuries."
Russell raised an eyebrow. "I'll bet he'd be horrified. You did say you're engaged in..."
"High treason, yes."
"What's a rational anarchist?" Dena asked. "I didn't think you had any politics, honey." Motormouth came back with coffee and a tray of sandwiches. Russell noted that Motormouth was not paying any special attention to him or Dena. The big man had classed them as nondangerous. In his secret heart, Russell had not yet ruled out the possibility of assassinating Michael. Was Motormouth that bad at his job?
Michael talked while he ate. "A rational anarchist— correct me, Russell— believes that he is solely responsible for his own actions, and admits of no authority higher than his own reason. He believes that governments and corporations and institutions do not exist— only self-responsible individuals."
"He follows only the rules he's made for himself," Russell agreed, "and pays just enough attention to other people's laws to stay out of jail."
"How about you, Dena?"
"I have no politics, Michael. I've never voted in my life because I was never offered anything to vote for and I couldn't decide which of those packs of idiots to vote against. But I guess I'd go along with what Russell says.
Talking politics is slippery. It's like talking religion—you're never really sure whether you're agreeing or disagreeing, because the important words aren't defined.
Do you really define a race riot as 'treason'?"
"Not necessarily. But I have no part in any race riot. I've been associated with a few in the past. I stopped two, and allowed others to happen, but I've never encouraged one in any way. But what I'm doing tonight is not a simple race riot, but high treason. I am at war with the United States of America, and have been since 1969."
"Sixty-nine?" Dena said. "Were you a Black Panther?"
"Lord, no. The Panthers were zealous and brave, and doomed. Bravery is no substitute for brains. What kind of revolutionary wears a uniform? And seeks out public armed confrontations with superior forces? The Panthers went a long way toward convincing America that blacks were dangerous idiots." He took a long sip of coffee.
"Huey chose the Panther name because, he said, 'The panther never strikes first, but when he is backed into a corner, he will strike back viciously.' When you think about it, that's a stupid way to fight a war. I was being educated in the art of fighting a war at that time, in Viet Nam. There were really two wars going on there. Did you hear much about the black-white race riots in Nam? At the end of '69 as I was mustering out, they took a poll of black soldiers, asked if they planned to join a militant group like the Panthers or SDS when they got home. Thirty-six percent of the combat troops said yes. Six percent of the officers said yes. A few months later there was a Harris Poll: thirty percent of American blacks felt they would 'probably have to resort to violence to win their rights,' and another ten percent described themselves as 'revolutionaries.'
"It was obvious to me that one day there was going to be open war between blacks and whites in this country. I never understood why it wasn't obvious to everybody.
"If the war was allowed to happen naturally, it would be a long and bloody and uniquely horrible one. And I didn't see how there could be many black people left alive in America when it was over. We're outnumbered ten to one—and the record of history seems clear: there isn't anything on earth as dangerous as a frightened white man. I foresaw a Holocaust, a national pogrom.
"So did many people, I guess. But they seemed able to forget it somehow, or wish it away, and those gifts I never had. Long into the night though I prayed for them.
"Like you, Russell, I knew that I was a self-responsible individual, a human being. So it was up to me to do something about it. Since the day I finally got that through my head, I've done nothing else with my life. I just couldn't see any chance at all to avert the war, and my people could not bear to lose it. So it was necessary to win it.
"For twenty-five years I've been prosecuting the war.
Following the precepts of Sun Tzu, I looked for a way to win it before the world knew it had started. A way to win it with minimal bloodshed. A way to win it that'd still allow for blacks and whites to live in peace when it was over."
What Russell wanted to say was, you are dreaming. What he said was, "You set your design parameters high."
Michael shook his head. "No. That was the absolute least I could settle for. Anything less would just be postponing the Holocaust. And I think it can be done. You do agree that open racial warfare is not far away?"
Russell nodded. He had finished an excellent sandwich and the coffee was first rate and he was feeling new strength in himself. "It's been coming for a long time. The U.S. has been in a steady decline since the '60s, and hard times aggravate racism on both sides. It's one of those things everybody knows, but you don't think about it much because you don't see anything to be done about it, so it just hurts to think about. Like the international atomic bomb club, or the fact that you're going to die."
"Just like dying," Michael said, "it's something you've got to think about if you're going to get it right. And you only get the one chance."
"All right," Russell said impatiently. "Enough philosophy.
You've got a plan. I don't see how you could possibly have a plan. I never heard of your organization before today.
How can you even dream of taking on the United States and winning?"
"A grain of sand can bring down a Cray mainframe—if it's in the right place at the right time."
Dena spoke up. "Then what are you doing tonight?"
"I'm taking Manhattan Island."
Russell was stunned speechless. His mind flooded with more questions than he could sort, let alone priorize, and he owned no expostulation equal to his need. His coffee mug fell unheeded to the floor. He squeezed his eyes shut.
Michael gave him time. Shortly the world steadied. He opened his eyes again. "My God, Michael," he said slowly, "I don't see how you can pull that off. How big an army could you recruit without coming to the attention of the FBI?"
"There are a little under twenty thousand soldiers in my army. Of those, about twelve thousand are combat troops—most of them experienced and all of them trained.
The rest are very strategically placed, and highly skilled in their professions. For twenly-five years people have asked my advice on career-choice— I've been farming Harlem, and infiltrating the rest of the city."
Russell shook his head. "Hard to believe you could keep that big a force a secret."
"Russell, what color is the Assistant Director of the FBI?"
"Jesus Christ on whole wheat toast." He shook his head again. "What do the eight thousand noncombatants do?"
"Some of them have been working ten years and more already, helping me set this up, helping me steal the money to finance it. Most of the rest are going to help me keep the city running once I own it."
"Stealing how?" Dena asked.
Michael nodded at the question. "You know how important the German scientists who fled from Hitler were for America? The trouble they went to get to Von Braun and the others after the war? Long ago I acquired some brains of that level of talent in computer larceny. Some of the biggest banks in the world are underwriting my war. They just don't know it. And there are a few dozen other ways we get money, including voluntary dues from each soldier."
Russell was frowning. "Twelve thousand doesn't seem like enough by an order of magnitude. Make me believe it."
"Manhattan is fifty percent black by day and over sixty five percent black by night. Whites—and asians, and lately even hispanics—have been hemorrhaging out of the City for years."
"Sure, but—"
"Let me lay it out. Here is how it should go down, if I have planned rightly and luck is with us. At three AM, Manhattan will be physically and informationally isolated from the rest of the United States. Every bridge and tunnel will be destroyed or interdicted simultaneously. All TV transmission will cease, all radio and microwave communication will be jammed, newspaper presses will stop rolling. Modems and fax machines will disconnect, and fail to reconnect. At the same time assault forces will take both major armories and assorted smaller ones—that part will be a boat race. They're loaded with ordinance for the African war, but by a coincidence that took a lot of arranging there are not a lot of white troops presently on Manhattan— a big wave left for Africa last week.
Substantial fractions of Army, National Guard, and police personnel are black: I have men in key positions. Almost no white raise or military live in Manhattan, they commute— so once the bridges and tunnels are gone, we have only one shift to deal with, at their sleepiest and most disorganized. By dawn there's going to be a large pile of red stones where Police Headquarters used to be, right by the ruins of the Brooklyn Bridge, and I will control all key points in Manhattan."
Russell still could not sort out his objections, Dena spoke.
"Michael, you say that nobody knows about your army that isn't in it? And you expect the black population of Manhattan to unite behind you tomorrow? Solidly?"
"I believe they will. Not unanimously, but overwhelmingly."
"Michael, this is nuts," Russell said. "Even if you could take Manhattan, how long could you hold it? And what would you do with it once you had it?"
"You met Tom Worthing. He is one of the first black generals the Marines ever had, and he resigned his commission covered with honours. He assured me ten years ago that with a good division he could take Manhattan and hold it indefinitely."
"But—"
"Say you're the general assigned to retake Manhattan. How will you go about it? By the way, the Coast Guard base on Governor's Island and the naval base in Brooklyn are ours too."
Russell thought hard. You could not drop paratroops onto the Manhattan skyline. The open parts of Central Park were all surrounded by high firing platforms—the skyscrapers—and what if, say, there were a million white hostages huddled there together in the summer sun? With several armouries full of sophisticated hardware, wireguided this and heat-seeking that and robot drones and pulse disruptors, Michael's army could annihilate a helicopter assault. Russell was not intimately familiar with Manhattan's shorelines, but he did not see how any amphibious assault could be practical, even without Navy and Coast Guard resources opposing it. And what would you use for a staging area? Come east through heavily black New Jersey? South through Westchester and the Bronx? West from Brooklyn and Queens? Black strongholds all.
Considering the people and artifacts and information and other assets held hostage, would you dare any assault at all? More than a million hostages, many of them world class VIPs...
Jesus Christ! Who was going to do the assaulting? How many all-white combat units did the United States of America have? With all-white support and logistics?
The magnitude and audacity of Michael's plan was slowly beginning to come home to Russell. Manhattan contained the World Financial Center. The World Trade Center.
Wall Street. The Federal Reserve, in which sat a substantial fraction of the gold in America. The Diamond District. Jesus wept and died for our sins, the United Nations! Embassies of every major nation on Earth. The headquarters of many of the world's largest corporations.
The garment center. Some of the finest museums and theatres in the world. The publishing industry. The true power center of the movie industry. The TV networks, the—
"Fuck!" Russell exclaimed. He looked at Michael with awe and horror. "STI! NAMSAT East!"
Dena was frightened by his voice. "Russell, what is it?"
"STI! Satellite Telecommunications International..."
"What? I don't understand."
"About ten years ago, a bunch of bright boys and girls quit Bell Research Labs and formed their own company. They had invented a major breakthrough called maxiplexing. I couldn't explain it to you in a week, but it lets a single satellite handle hundreds of thousands of signals simultaneously, much cheaper than any preexisting method.
Cheaper by orders of magnitude. More important, they were as smart in handling their breakthrough as Bell and IBM were in their day, maybe smarter. The story of the early years of STI will be studied for centuries. The point is, right now they have a virtual monopoly on satellite communications in the free world. And their central headquarters is in Manhattan."
"I still don't see what's—"
The words were tripping over themselves. "Look, there are two STI satellites over North America, in geostationary orbit. Between them they cover the continent. There used to be a lot of satellites, a lot of satellite companies but none of them could compete economically with maxiplexing.
STI crushed or ate them all, the way Bell ate all the phone companies in my father's day, and their satellites are junk now, orbiting garbage—there's talk of using them as scrap to build the Space Station with."
"What do the satellites do?"
"If you make a long distance phone call to California an uplink here in New York squirts your call up to NAMSAT East. The satellite relays it to its twin brother, NAMSAT West, which beams it down to your party in L.A. The same with television—there aren't a dozen broadcast stations left in the country. That's why you can get the same 500 channels wherever you go. STI's NAMSAT net is much cheaper than broadcasting."
"I already own the STI Building," Michael said quietly.
"You heard the news the same time I did; it fell while we were talking in Garvey Park. The east coast control uplink belongs to me."
Russell shivered. "Great blithering mother of shit. You control television, long distance phone, and commercial data routes for North America."
"That's right."
He jumped up from his chair and began to pace. "But— but—why, you could—" He shut up and paced, frowning furiously.
"Data routes?" Dena said. "You mean all the—"
"—computer information flow for this country," Russell said, "and more. The international banking community depends on the SWIFT systems of satellite information transfer. Michael could make every credit card in North America a worthless piece of plastic just by blowing up that uplink. Or no, he wouldn't even have to—just feed the satellites bad course corrections and cause their orbits to decay. The national, the continental economy would grind to a halt overnight, and the world economy wouldn't be far behind. If you graphed the dislocation, something as small as the Great Depression would disappear in the noise.
Dena, Michael has the planet by the balls."
"I wouldn't want to destroy sophisticated technology like that," Michael said. "I don't even intend to interrupt data flow longer than I can help it—that would bring suffering and hardship to hundreds of millions, and I plan to hurt as few people as possible. But my opponents don't know that. And Russell is right: sooner or later, all the money in North America passes through STI's computers for encoding and maxiplexing. Suppose I changed the parity bit, or just injected spurious bits at random, at unpredictable intervals? Suppose I just threatened to?"
Russell was aghast. "I think they might very well nuke Manhattan. No, of course they wouldn't, they couldn't risk even a neutron job; they'd never get the satellite back, you'd have instructed it to ignore any uplink that wasn't coded your way and they'd never find the code. But Jesus, Michael, just the threat would make the whole system useless. They couldn't trust it, so they wouldn't dare use it."
"Exactly."
"I don't follow you," Dena said.
Russell was too upset to speak; Michael had to take it.
"Dena, let's say you walk into Chase Manhattan tomorrow and utter a cheque for five hundred dollars. You do your banking with Halifax Metro Credit Union?"
She raised her eyebrows. "How do you know so much about us?"
He smiled that warm sad smile. "Child, all I know about you are the experiences we've shared—and everything about you that ever went into a computer."
"Okay. So I write a cheque for five hundred."
"What does Chase do? It asks your Credit Union if you have funds on deposit to cover the cheque. The clerk punches the question into a computer—which sends it to STI, which bounces it off NAMSAT East to Halifax. The Credit Union computer agrees that you're good for the money, and bounces that reply back to New York. The clerk accepts your cheque, counts out cash, and tells his computer to get the money from the one up north. Again, both steps go through NAMSAT. And, since your cheque is for Canadian dollars, both sides have to go through NAMSAT again to get the precise exchange rate for that moment. Six messages ricocheted off that satellite, and they all go through the STI master computer. Billions of dollars a day go through that very process. Most of the money on the planet is just bits in the computer net.
"Now suppose a playful old darkie in New York, with a nasty sense of humour and a bad attitude, has been amusing himself with the master protocols of that computer.
Suppose, just for fun, it's been told that any time a transfer sequence comes through for any person whose first name ends in 'A,' it is to record the funds as transferred, without actually taking them from the bank of origin. Your money is credited as received by Chase, but it isn't debited back home. You just made five hundred dollars out of thin air, and the international banking system is none the wiser. Oh, one day you'd figure it out, probably the next time you get a statement from the Credit Union. But will you report it? If you do, how many reports will they need to figure out that the final 'A' in your first name was the operative factor?
"Or suppose the computer has been told to ignore the correct dollar exchange rate, and substitute one that varies with the number of N.Y.P.D. Blue reruns being sent over the same satellite at that hour?
"You see the problem now? If the international banking community can't trust the system, they can't use it. And if they can't use it, they can't function. They committed themselves irretrievably to computers all the way back in the '70s and it's too late to switch back. The same situation appiies for the stock and commodities exchanges, for most of the federal government and all major corporations. The IRS, the Social Security system, the Federal Reserve—Dena, any system bigger than a city that has to communicate with itself or the world funnels through STI, and a lot of them use NAMSAT East on a daily basis. I could wreck them all. Or I could just hurt them all very badly. But if I simply say that I'm doing anything at all to the system—even if in fact I'm not—they all have to stop using it at once. Have to. And they may not even be able to fall back on transferring information verbally, by phone—because long distance phone goes through the same system.
"So I have to be very careful not even to threaten to monkey with the system."
"But how did such a stupid system ever get set up in the first place?" Dena cried. "How could they put all their eggs in one basket that way?"
"Any question that begins, 'Why do they—?', the answer is 'Money.' Because it was irresistibly cheap. Because it brought the cost of information transfer very near to zero.
I'll tell you this: the force that captured that building is much bigger, and took more planning, than the one that's going to take the big armoury in a while."
Russell had his voice back by now. "The three people who founded STI were very cagey, hon. They never patented maxiplexing. So nobody else knows how to do it. To recreate their work, you'd have to do what they did: plunder the resources of an outfit the size and quality of Bell Research Labs for a decade, and be three geniuses with a lot of luck. Cleverly, they made it much cheaper to simply do business with them. The only major holdouts were the military, who maintain their own satellites and uplinks. They do not have channels to spare for commercial and nonmilitary interests. It's really no stupider than having all the electric power for the East Coast interconnected in a system that can be brought down by three lightning strokes in one hour. That's happened three times already, and they're still using the same system.
Michael, that reminds me—what will you do when they cut your power and water?"
Michael frowned. "As to water, I sincerely hope they will not interrupt service. For one thing there would be a lot of thirsty white hostages. For another, since there are always fires, even in the most peaceful of times, it wouldn't be long before much of Manhattan was embers. As to power, by five this morning we'll be cut out of the power grid.
There are twenty-four power stations In Manhattan, nineteen in Queens that are being seized as we speak, eleven in Brooklyn the same, more on Staten Island. Most of them can be taken simply by rattling enough garbage cans to wake up the guards—though you might still need machine guns for the rats in Brooklyn and Queens. The combined capacity of all those plants—true summer capability, not nameplate rating—is just short of 10,000 megawatts. In a pinch we could get by with the ones here on Manhattan plus 'Big ALLIS' over in Ravenswood.
We've got power as long as the coal holds out, and we've got plenty."
"So the limiting factor is food."
"Yes."
"I heard once there's only three days worth of food on Manhattan at any given time."
"An exaggeration. And if the Navy does blockade New York Harbour to prevent any food from being shipped in by sympathetic groups, it'll soon become impossible to feed white hostages. Soon after that some people might begin to feed on them. But it'd be a good week or two before things actually reached that pass, and long before that I hope to have the war won. Bear in mind that a lot of that so-called three days' worth of food is intended for commuters who won't be around to eat it—one of many reasons why we're striking in the dead of night."
"I'm lost again," Dena said plaintively. "How can they even try to starve you out if you can screw up their data routes on short notice?"
"Ah," Michael said, "that's what I started to say before. I have to be extremely careful never to threaten such a thing.
If I do, the damage is done. A compromised system is useless. If I play this right, they'll all end up wanting to believe that I'm too dumb to have thought of it, or too unsophisticated to pull it off, that I've only taken over the uplink to monopolize TV transmission and control the phone system. The first thing any intelligent revolutionary does is seize control of communications.
"But they'll never be sure, and it'll give me a strong psychological edge when I start to negotiate."
Russell shivered; the wicked elegance of the scheme was breathtaking. "If the military ever realizes how sophisticated you really are, they'll nuke you on the spot and to hell with the world banking system. Why, you could use NAMSAT to feed false data into their satellites—no, I don't want to think about that. I don't want anyone anywhere ever to think about that."
"I'm not thinking about it, son. Not for a second, not even in extremis, not even if we fail. Take it off your mind."
"Tell me about this negotiating, instead. You've got Manhattan held for ransom, and vou've got the U.S.—and for that matter Canada and Mexico—by the throat. Okay.
What's your price? What ransom can you ask? That they can possibly give?"
Michael started to answer, then checked himself. "What would you ask for in my place, Russell? Dena?"
He shut his mouth firmly and thought.
"God," Dena murmured after a minute, "how much money would it take to make up for what America has done to its black people? More than they've got, for sure. More than there is."
"You miss the point," Michael said forcefully, and Russell and Dena both started. They had not heard that much steel in Michael's voice since the day he had discussed the treatment of crack pushers with two black cops in Harlem.
"Nothing can 'make up for' what whites have done to blacks in this country. Nothing can 'make up for' what blacks have done to whites in this country! What has kept this racewar inevitable for so long is that both sides have legitimate grievances, both sides have done unforgivable things to each other. Which side did the most unforgivable thing first, or most recently, is absolutely irrelevant! The whole point is that all the unforgivable things on both sides must be forgiven, and if they can't be forgiven then they must at least be forgotten. We have to wipe the slate clean and start over, or else kill each other now and have done with it."
There was a short silence.
"'Wipe the slate clean—' you say," Dena said.
All at once Russell got it. The idea was like an explosion of flashpowder at arm's length. It was so simple, so obvious, so necessary—and so enormous that an hour ago he would have, if he could have entertained the idea at all, dismissed it as an unattainable fantasy.
"Of course," he breathed. "A black homeland..."
=
Dena gasped and Michael smiled his melancholy smile. A portion of Russell's spinning mind noted that Michael's sadness was a large part of his charisma. Your heart instinctively went out to anyone who sorrowed that deeply, and could still smile, still function. It helped you to forgive him for being such a perceptive judge of character. "An Israel," Michael said. "A Zimbabwe. A Quebec. Hopefully more successful than any of those. Later today we'll announce the formation of a new nation, and petition the United Nations for recognition. If luck is with us, I hope to have it within two weeks."
"A black homeland," Dena repeated wonderingly.
"There's background for the petition. Black Americans have been petitioning the United Nations for half a century.
Back in 1983 the Minnesota chapter of the Black American Law Student Association petitioned the UN Subcommission on Human Rights in Geneva, on behalf of all black citizens of this country, asking for relief from a 'nationwide police campaign of terror.' It's been done five times since—to no effect, of course, but it's there on the books. We've got a solid legitimate case going back two hundred years, and all the world knows it. I have a fairly stable interim government lined up and ready to go, a constitution I think I can get ratified in a week, and general elections due in a matter of weeks."
"Where?" Russell asked with a voice gone rusty. "What do you have in mind for your Quebec?"
"Well," Michael said. "I intend to go in asking for what we deserve. We are one tenth of the population; we deserve ten percent of the real estate and assets. But that's just a bargaining position. I'm willing to settle for only two states out of fifty-one. New York and Pennsylvania."
As a designer, Russell was accustomed to thinking in the largest terms in brainstorming sessions, but this tripped his circuit breakers. "Why not throw in Jersey?" he asked ironically. "Heavy industry, farmland, good highway system—"
"It's not Uncle Sam's to give," Michael answered with equal irony. "It belongs to the Mafia. Besides, that would give us a whole thirty-fifth of the land surface area of the U.S. On behalf of a tenth of the population, I'm willing to settle for a thirty-seventh, less than a hundred thousand square miles. For one thing, many black people just won't move—perhaps as many as half of them, though I hope not. I need to house from twelve to twenty-five million people—and New York and Pennsylvania together currently hold thirty-two million. Yes, we'll need more lebensraum some day. Maybe we'll end up invading Jersey. I hope we'll buy it one day. Meanwhile we can be self-sufficient for water, power, and most of our food, and I think we can build a solvent economy. Put it this way: I have commitments from certain foreign investors. If we can get UN recognition, we will be bankrolled. Excuse me—"
Trezessa had knocked and entered the room. At Michael's nod she approached, bent low and whispered in his ear.
Russell paid no attention—he was busy rearranging the map of North America in his head. He had long since stopped doubting that Michael could do what he said he could do.
But what to label the new anomaly? What name had Michael selected for his new nation? Trezessa finished her conversation and Russell started to ask—but at the sight of Michael's face he forgot his question. There was now so much sorrow there that somehow Russell knew some of it was about to spill onto him.
"Russell, Dena, I'm very sorry," Michael said. "That was a report from Jerome Turner. They ran into trouble on the way here, and they got separated. He can't locate your daughter and her bodyguard."
Dena screamed, "Oh God, no!" and tried to rise. Russell barely managed to catch her before she hit the floor. On his knees, cradling her in his arms, he murmured Jennifer's name over and over.