Lawrence Watt-Evans - The Spartacus File

“Of course not,” Cecelia agreed. “They'll maybe pull a soundbite or two.”

“Exactly. And I wrote that speech so there's only one soundbite worth pulling. Maybe one or two of the networks will miss it, but sooner or later it'll go out.”

Cecelia gaped in astonishment. “You mean you made the speech boring on purpose?”

“Sure.”

“So what's the soundbite?”

“You didn't catch it?” For the first time since making the vid, Casper looked worried.

Cecelia looked embarrassed. “The speech was boring, Cas; I didn't watch it all the way through.”

“It's only ten minutes.”

“I lasted about two, okay?”

Casper shook his head in amazement.

“Okay, okay,” Cecelia said. “What's the soundbite?”

“You'll hear it on the news, I hope,” he said.

She had to be satisfied with that.

Bob Schiano looked up suddenly when the newscaster mentioned “wanted terrorist Casper Beech.”

What had they been saying? He hadn't been listening. Had Covert finally nailed Beech, despite Schiano's lack of help? Despite, in fact, his active assistance to Beech in the form of the file he'd e-mailed?

Or had Beech struck somewhere, and begun his revolution?

And there was Beech's face on the screen, and by the quality of the picture it was a home project, not anything there at the studio.

“The government says I'm an escaped terrorist,” Beech said, and his voice and manner carried intensity and conviction as he spoke, even with the poor reproduction. He hadn't looked anywhere near so alive in the old interview files Schiano had seen. “I say they lie,” Beech continued, “and I say that I'd surrender if I thought I'd live through it.”

Then it was cut short.

Schiano stared at the screen. “What the hell was that about?” he wondered aloud. That wasn't anything he'd programmed, so far as he could see. Oh, the attitude was from the charisma subroutines that he'd incorporated, the stuff from Behavioral Sciences and Psychwar, and it was good to see that it seemed to be working, since Schiano himself didn't understand how any of that functioned; the delivery was great, but the words were wrong. Saying the government lied was fine, but Beech should be looking for recruits at this point; he shouldn't be talking about surrender, he should be talking about inevitable victory.

What was he doing?

“God damn it!” Smith said. He turned to his aide. “Get a dozen men down to that station now -I want that disk. I want to know everything there is to know about how it got there. And I want to know what idiot put it on the air without clearing it-either that, or who cleared it!”

“Yes, sir.”

“And get Schiano up here! I thought Beech was supposed to be recruiting the bums and winos we've been rousting, not making video speeches!”

“You think that'll do it?” Cecelia said. “Just that? I didn't see anything like that in the file you showed us.”

She was seated at one end of an old couch, Mirim at the other, with Casper in the middle holding the remote control.

“No, of course not,” Casper said, hitting the MUTE button. “It's just a start, something to get people interested in my case. The next step is a rally.”

“A what? ” She turned to stare at him. “Casper, are you crazy? You can't go out in public yet! The next step is a lawsuit.”

Casper shook his head. Just like a lawyer-if all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail, so lawyers always wanted to use the courts. “No, Celia,” he said. “If we try to do it that way, I'll be shot resisting arrest, or trying to escape, or maybe I'll just have an unfortunate auto accident. They have to kill me, just the way Rome had to kill Spartacus. The idea that a slave could rebel and live was too dangerous for Rome to ever let Spartacus live; he had to win or die. It's not quite the same for me; they're big enough they could let a mere rebel live. But I'm not just a rebel, I'm the rebel leader they made, and they can't let me live. I have to win or die. And I'm not going to win with a lawsuit!”

“Why not? ” Cecelia insisted. “If we get a court order…”

“Celia, it won't matter. They aren't going to play by the rules. They don't want me in jail, they want me dead.”

Cecelia subsided unhappily and slumped back on the couch; then, abruptly, she stood up.

“Do it your way, Casper,” she said. “You think you know it all now, you believe everything that programmer put in your head and you won't listen to me, and you've got Mirim there acting like your damned cheering section, oh you big strong male, she's always liked ‘em tough and stupid, like Leonid, so she'll go along with you without stopping to think. Well, I'm not ruled by my hormones, or by some Covert Operations programmer grinding out software that's never supposed to get used in the first place, so he doesn't care how good it is! I'm not going to throw away everything I know and do what this miracle file says! I read your ‘Sparta-doc’ file and what that Schiano said you could do, and I don't believe it. They can't imprint that much. You suit yourself, Casper Beech, but it won't work. It's insane, holding a rally and trying to take over the country! It can't be done, but you can make a deal to save your own sorry ass, if you'll let me set it up. And when you realize that, if you're still alive, when you realize you've been an idiot, if you ask me nicely, then maybe I'll do my best to save you.”

She stamped away.

Mirim and Casper watched her go. Casper frowned.

“I think I'll be sleeping on the couch tonight,” he said. Then he turned to Mirim and said, “and if you were thinking of inviting me into your bed, thanks, but not yet. Let her cool down first.”

Mirim's mouth opened, then closed. She stared at him for a moment before she found her voice.

“And what if I wasn't thinking of inviting you?” she said.

Casper smiled wryly. “Well, then I've misjudged the situation and by bringing it out in the open now I may have just saved everybody some later embarrassment.”

Mirim smiled back at him. “You didn't misjudge,” she admitted.

“Well, good. Thank you. But I'll still sleep on the couch for at least two or three nights. We're going to need Celia's help later, after the rally.”

“After the rally?” Mirim asked. “You really plan to hold a rally?”

“Sure do.”

“How the hell are you going to do that? Isn't that just asking for a sniper to take you down?”

Casper smiled at her again, a big surprised smile this time. “Of course it is,” he said. “That's the point. We have to taunt them, make them act stupidly, and make them do it in front of an audience.”

“But Cas…”

“The real trick here,” he said, interrupting her, “is to live through it.”

Smith waved the print-out at Schiano. “Is he really this crazy?”

Schiano shook his head. “I don't know,” he said. “I didn't think he was crazy at all, but this isn't anything I put into the program.”

“So you don't know if it's a trick?”

“It isn't anything I programmed,” Schiano repeated.

He didn't need to read the print-out; he'd seen the messages himself. They were all over the nets. Posters were all over New York and Philadelphia as well, pasted on walls, utility poles, trashcans, everywhere. Schiano figured that everyone who had ever been involved with PFC at all must have been called in to help put them up.

Smith was probably trying to track down the printer responsible, but that wasn't likely to work. Schiano doubted a print shop had been involved at all. Anyone could have run off a few thousand posters on his home printer easily enough, and if that was what they'd done then even if Covert was able to identify the make of printer, that wouldn't tell anyone anything useful. It was probably some model that was common as dirt.