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grim. "And the real bad abuses, they get covered up. Lots of people just
disappear in the night, never to be seen again. They got big
concentration camps all over the West, too, guarded with the best elite
troops. Americans weren't any different than any other population once they
started living in constant fear."
Suzy seemed to like the idea. "So our `different breed' is just
the same after all. It won't be difficult to remold them, with the
proper guidance."
Sam was silent on that one, but he didn't believe it. Revolution looked
exceptionally unlikely under these conditions, and a lot of human misery was
being perpetrated, and perpetrated not by some dic-tator in a poor and
starving country or one with a long tradition of dictatorship, but
by a government with its finger on the nuclear trigger and growing
increasingly fascistic.
This quickly, too!
he thought. He found it hard to accept. Maybe American society was truly as
rotten as he'd pictured it and maybe it was also the most totally politically
naive society on earth.
Speed limits were something for the distant past; they filled up several times
at military stations, grab-bing food at the same time, but mostly they kept
going. From Mann's Harbor in North Carolina to the Catoctins was four hundred
fifty or so kilometers; they made it in the early afternoon.
"It's Saturday," Joe told them, turning off a road and passing through the
checkpoint at a little town called Thurmont, then up a small, winding road
where the signs read
Catoctin Mountain Park.
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The scenery was beautiful, wild and isolated; it was amazing that there was so
quiet a wilderness this close to so many millions.
They turned off on a road where a sign directed them to
Cunningham Falls State Park, then got backed up behind three olive drab school
busses full of people. Finally they turned, went past a beautiful lake,
and down to an enormous parking area.
"Put on the SP armbands and strap on the pistols under the seats," Joe told
them. He was already doing so himself. "We're going to be three cops me the
old hand and you two being introduced to the area. All of these people
are military having some fun in the water here. Just act new, poke
around, and use that phone box over there to make your calls. You
have a little money, so get something to eat if you want in the snack
bar. Then just wander around, and wait."
They pulled in near the snack bar just up from the bath houses. Hundreds of
men and women were here, playing games in the grass and woods, and making use
of the man-made beach to swim and play in the beautiful and large man-made
lake.
Joe wandered into the snack bar, and for a few moments, the first in a long
while, they were truly on their own.
"Now what?" Sam asked her.
"I'm going to take a shit," she said. "You get what you like from the snack
bar and make your call. I'll do it later."
He nodded and she went off. He didn't feel like eating. What he felt like was
getting a bathing suit and joining those people having fun down there on the
lake. Still, he was also conscious that this was the place for them to get out
of as quickly as possible, and he fumbled in his pocket, found a quarter, and
went over to the phone box.
He stared at the phone for a moment, then reached back into his
pocket. Yes, he had two quar-ters. He sighed, put a quarter in the phone,
heard the dial tone, then dialed the number that was supposed to bring the
next stage of people here. It was an in-teresting number, unlike any he'd ever
heard of before. One-500-555-2323. What was a "500" number, anyway?
And wasn't "555"
information?
The phone clicked several times, then rang once, and he heard another picked
up. For a second he was confused, somehow conditioned for a response, but now
he realized that there would be none. It was probably a recording anyway.
"Twenty twenty-five," he said "Two-oh-two-five." There was a click, a dead
silence at the other end of the line, and, even before he hung up, his quarter
came back.
He remembered suddenly his first encounter with this organization,
the TV mail-order switchboard, and realized that this number was
probably tied to something like that. A perfectly public toll-free
number for subversion, he thought. It was somehow ironic; it said something
else about the culture.
He considered whether or not to make the other call. He put the quarter in,
then hesitated for a long time. Did he, in fact, want to use the FBI signal?
He thought about fascist America, now actually what he'd always claimed it
was. He thought of the camps, of the terror, and of the people in this new
organization. Most of all, he thought of Suzy.
Did he want to betray them? Deep down? He had to confess to himself that he
did not, although those pictures of the Wilderness Organism victims were never
far from his mind. Most of all, it was
Suzy. She would never be taken alive, he knew that. He couldn't. Not now. He
just couldn't.
He hung up, got his quarter back, and turned. Suzy was coming toward him.
"God! I feel better!" she enthused. She drew close to him. "Did you make it?"
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He nodded.
"Okay, then, go buy us both Cokes. I'll be with you in a second."
He turned and walked into the snack bar. He didn't see Joe around and figured
that the older man must have come out while he was on the phone. Almost at the
same time as the Cokes came, Suzy was there as well, smiling and nodding to
him.
"Let's go outside. May as well look the place over," he suggested, and they
walked outside.
The staff car was gone.
They walked around a while, looking officious, and talking with some of the
people, particularly some of the lower-ranking MPs and SPs on routine patrol.
Both bluffed extremely well, and were ex-tremely well briefed for the job, but
it wasn't com-fortable. Parading in front of the enemy when one slip could
ruin you wasn't the most pleasant fun in the world; Cornish was only happy
that it was hot enough that heat perspiration masked the nervous type.
"I wish they'd come," he muttered between clenched teeth.
"They're looking us over good first," she whis-pered back. "Want to make
sure."
The hours passed, making it all that much worse, and since their cover had
them on duty they couldn't relax. Suzy almost had a problem when she failed to
salute a first lieutenant in uniform but it was glossed over quickly with
apologies. Afterwards she swore that one day she'd kill the son of a
bitch.
Finally an official-painted green station wagon with the logo of the Maryland
Parks Service pulled up next to them. A young woman in park ranger
garb and Smokey the Bear hat leaned out the win-dow and peered at them
through dark sunglasses.
"Hey!" she called to them. They went over to her.
"One-500-555-2323," she said softly to them. "Get in."
They got in, still sweating, and moved off.
"I thought you'd never get here," Sam said, re-lieved.
"Only the first step," the woman replied. "Remove the gun belts and armbands [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]