Jack Yeovil - Demon Download

Chantal knew that this was what she had been sent to America to deal with. She had a moment of doubt. She tried to overcome it.

"We can't do anything until morning," she told Stack. "Let's get some sleep. Get in the car, and I'll drive you to the motel. You are staying at the motel?"

Stack was thinking five minutes behind. He shook his head.

"Yeah…uh…"

"Good. I'll take a room. We can be at the church tomorrow."

She got behind the wheel, and opened the passenger door. Bewildered, Stack got in. By the time they reached the motel, he was asleep—unconscious?—in his seat, head hanging against the safety belt.

She left him there and, unable to find a nightman, broke into a room.

Lauderdale was inspecting his androids. The whole troop stood to attention under the cellophane shrouds in the store-room. Seven-feet-tall, andiropomorphic and faceless under their helmets, they looked a little like the robot in the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still, but slimmer and battleship grey. The only customised touch was the US Cav yellow stripe down their legs.

The Robo-Troopers were Captain Lauderdale's special field of expertise. The Cav didn't use them that often any more, following the wave of anti-android feeling that had swept the nation after the Governor of Los Angeles send them into the Watts NoGo to break up a peaceful demonstration against the USA's links with Greater Rhodesia. Some programmer's minor error had led to an override of the androids' prime directive and a massacre of 1594 people. Most Agencies had quietly scrapped their android programs after that, or diversified into different branches of robotics. Hammond Maninski Inc., out of the fortress city of Pittsburgh, was rumoured to be experimenting with the Donovan Treatment, putting human brains in android bodies—as in the British police teevee show, Dixon of Dock Green— and putting them in the field. Lauderdale knew that was a bad move. The human brain should be well removed from the field of combat, watching the action on all the monitors, playing God, not stuck inside a tin can waiting for the first lucky home-made frag to burst its eggshell.

He ran a systems check on the master control console. The androids hadn't moved since the last inspection. Really, Lauderdale ought to detail someone to dust them down more often. They hadn't been used in action for eighteen months, and had only been trotted out for parades and display inspections after much nudging. Lauderdale resented the downplaying of his discipline. He felt like a spare man at Apache, assigned to odd jobs like looking after official visitors rather man performing the duties he had signed up for.

Colonel Rintoon had ordered everyone to double-check their own areas of the fort. He believed there was a murderer loose somewhere, and that he had gained access to and exit from Younger's kitchen by some as-yet unknown means. Everyone was supposed to be searching for clues. Lauderdale agreed with Captain Finney's diagnosis. Younger had been killed by his own kitchen equipment. The physical presence of a killer hadn't been necessary. Finney had explained that a murderer could tamper with the kitchen by tapping into the central system of the fort, but Rintoon insisted on believing the evidence of the power outages and the thats and maintaining that Apache was inviolate. Rintoon was near the edge. Problems were popping up beyond the parameters of his programming.

None of the androids had bloody fingers. Then again, Lauderdale hadn't expected them to.

He took one last look around the store-room, turned off the lights, and stepped outside into the corridor.

Lieutenant Rexroth was running by, a print-out streaming from his hand.

They bumped together. Rexroth saluted.

"Sorry, Captain."

Lauderdale was irritated. "What's the hurry, Rex?"

"Major Faulcon has to see this."

They walked, almost jogging, along together.

"What's important?"

"Younger's orders. They were sealed in his own terminal files. Captain Finney gave me the codes and told me to access them. They're germane."

"Shouldn't you be taking them to Colonel Rintoon then?"

Rexroth stopped short. Lauderdale could tell the cmer officer was conflicted about something. He wanted to talk, but thought he shouldn't.

"What is it, Rex?"

Rexroth looked at the print-out, and over his shoulder. There was no one else in the corridor.

"What did Younger say?"

"I…I can't follow it…it's about chain of command."

Lauderdale took the print-out. Rexroth didn't fight him for it. Lauderdale started reading from the top.

"Directive Five, sir."

Lauderdale looked down for it. It was triple-starred.

"It was scrambled three times. And marked MOST URGENT."

Lauderdale read. "IN THE EVENT OF MY DEATH OR INCAPACITY," Younger had written, "COMMAND OF FORT APACHE IS TO DEVOLVE TO MAJOR HENDRY FAULCON. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES IS COLONEL VLADEK RINTOON TO ASSUME TEMPORARY OR PERMANENT CONTROL OF THE OUTPOST."

"I don't understand," Lauderdale said. "This is against all procedures."

"Look down again. It's in the notations at the bottom."

Here it was. "COLONEL RINTOON'S LATEST PSYCHIATRIC PROFILE SUGGESTS HE IS SUFFERING FROM EXTREME STRESS. HE IS NOT TO BE ADVANCED IN RANK. HE IS TO BE REMOVED FROM ACTIVE DUTY AS SOON AS AN OFFICER OF EQUIVALENT RANK CAN BE BROUGHT IN FROM FORT COMANCHE. A PRELIMINARY DIAGNOSIS SUGGESTS INCIPIENT PARANOIA, COMPULSIVE HOSTILITY, FRACTURED PSYCHE. COPIES OF THIS REPORT HAVE BEEN DESPATCHED TO GENERAL ERNEST HAYCOX, STATE GOVERNOR TOLLIVER." It was dated two days ago. So much for timing.

Rexroth was fidgeting with his lip. "We have to do something, sir."

"Colonel Rintoon has assumed command. There was nothing to suggest that he shouldn't. Younger should have suspended him from active duty immediately if he believed this."

"But he didn't. We have to talk to Major Faulcon. You, me and Finney. Rintoon has to be relieved of his command before something goes seriously wrong."

The corridor was still empty. .

"Something already is seriously wrong, Rexroth."

"Yes sir, I'm sorry sir."

Lauderdale drew his sidearm, pressed the barrel to the fleshy part under Rexroth's jaw, and fired, twice.

"The Rath of Joseph is thorny," he whispered.

Then, he raised the alarm.

They were having real coffee on the balcony of their hotel, overlooking the pleasant central square of Managua. It was the flower festival, and the square was multi-coloured with the heaps of blossom placed at the foot of the equestrian statue of Augusto Cesar Sandino almost up to his saddle. The smiling faces of Daniel Ortega and Archbishop Romero shone down from a three-storey poster. It was the middle of the morning, but they had only just had their breakfast sent up. A band was playing the songs of the Revolution, and a young girl was singing about wheat, love and her thirty-thirty ammunition.

"Trente-trente?" said Leona, the slight breeze shifting her shining hair as she dissected her grapefruit with a serrated spoon. "I got guns, you got guns…"

A flight of birds shot up from the square. Stack sipped his coffee, sacriligiously despoiled with Sweet 'n' Lo.

"…all God's chillun got guns."

Leona wasn't really bitter, he knew, but back in the States there were duties waiting for both of them. Both felt guilty about snatching this downtime for themselves.

He set his cup down and walked round to her side of the table. He smoothed her hair down, and kissed the top of her head. She relaxed and stroked his wrists, and he massaged her neck.

The girl was singing only of love now, of the children she was expecting from her soldier boyfriend, of the bright future tfieir struggle had won for the country. She sang of their defiance of the Yankee tyrants and the multinat octopus. Everybody down here had been friendly, but the papers, the teevee shows and the songs painted all Americans as villains. After years of recaff, Stack, with the rich taste of coffee in his mouth, could see why some thought the CAC a paradise on earth.