Jack Chalker - A War of Shadows

She slammed it down like it was an angry snake. “What’s the matter?” Bede asked nervously. “The phone.” She gasped. “I—I called Edelman on it this afternoon. To get a chance to see him.

Now it won’t connect me.”

He shrugged uncomfortably. “Probably just more of this martial law nonsense.”

“Let’s go, Joe,” she urged, getting up. “Let’s go over to the FBI Building ourselves.”

He sighed. “Okay, Sandy. Hell, I won’t look scared if you don’t.”

They grabbed their coats and walked out the door. The sentries were still there, and they nodded politely.

Sandra O’Connell suddenly felt extremely paranoid, as if unseen eyes were watching everything they said or did, as if unseen enemies were waiting to pounce at any moment.

The elevator came at last, and they got in. She pushed “G” and the doors closed and the car started up, taking an incredibly slow path by her imagination’s reckoning.

It opened and they walked out. Immediately four men converged on them. She felt panic.

One flashed a badge. “Secret Service, Doctors,” he informed them in a crisp, businesslike manner. “We’d like you to come with us for a few minutes.”

They were puzzled, but complied. It was reassuring, at least, to be in the hands of the law, she thought.

A small office door down the corridor was opened by one of the men, the other three of whom flanked them, and they entered.

“Now, will somebody kindly explain to me what this is all about?” she demanded angrily.

“This,” said one of the men, wetting down a rag from which issued the strong odor of chloroform.

He was in a hazy fog, vaguely aware of what was going on but unable either to do much about it or to care very much. The drug was a minor hypnotic rather popular with the young; you floated, you felt wonderful, everything looked beautiful, and you didn’t think but were willing to be led around or do anything you were told. In the popular culture two people took it, whispered wonderful things about love or sex or something in a nice, quiet room, then acted out their fantasies until, in a couple of hours, they went to sleep and woke up feeling great.

Like most such substances, its popularity sprang from the fact that the average person’s life is simply too damned boring. And, it was true, the stuff didn’t hurt you at all—but it had one nasty little effect, being a hypnotic. You were totally open to suggestion and unfiltered outside stimuli; in wrong or, worse, sadistic hands, you were strictly at the mercy of whoever was around.

It was a handy little drug for an underground force.

So he’d cheerfully gone with the nice people, with vague, blurry memories of a long car ride to a small private airfield, and from there into a plane with numerous other people. Then he was asleep.

In between the periodic dosages administered in cups of juice or even water, there were occasional flashes but not much else. A seaplane landing, a ship pickup on the ocean, a voyage of who knew how long, a landing on some deserted shore, more flights, funny-looking people with strange languages and accents—but all of it ran together and none of it made much sense.

Sam Cornish awoke. It was a gentle awakening as if from a deep and restful sleep; he yawned, stretched, and felt really good.

He was strapped in a plane seat and was in the air somewhere. It was a very old crate; there was a lot of vibration and the interior hadn’t been maintained in quite some time.

Looking around he saw a number of other men and women in the other seats, most sleeping deeply but a few awake and looking around or just staring.

For the first time he realized that all of the windows in the aircraft had been painted jet black. He looked over at the person in the seat next to him, a black man with a few streaks of gray in his kinky hair who was still sleeping, then turned to the window. He was still wearing the clothes he’d worn in the apartment back in West Newton. They, and he, smelled pretty gamy. He fumbled in his pockets, but there was nothing there. Wallet, penknife, everything had been taken.

He had fairly long nails, though, and found after a few tries that he could scratch off a little paint with his index fingernail. It was slow and frustrating, but he didn’t have anything else to do, anyway.

Finally he produced a tiny line of glass under the paint, and he leaned over and tried to see if anything was visible outside.

Either it was night out there or else they’d painted the outside, too. All was still blackness.

He sighed and settled back. There was nothing to do but wait.

After a while more and more of the passengers came awake. Finally the man next to him stirred, blinked, and sat up, looking around at the plane and then at Sam. His expression was more thoughtful than puzzled.

“Very efficient,” he mumbled at last. “Much better than the old days.” His voice was deep and rich, and there was the slight trace of a West Indian accent in it.

“I think we could all use showers, though,” Sam said, trying to open a dialog.

The other man nodded, then smiled wistfully, as if remembering. “Even so, back in the old days we used to have to go under for weeks.” He chuckled. “I often wondered why the pigs never caught us by our stench alone.”

“Who were you with?” Sam asked.

“The Black October Brigades,” the man said. “You?”

He shrugged. “A number of different groups. Synergistic Commune Action Brigade was the last one.”

The other nodded again. “I remember that. Jim Foley and I were in Cuba for a while together a few years back. Whatever happened to him, anyway? I got a little fed up cutting sugar cane and came back, but he stuck it out. Never thought somebody like him would stay—drives you nuts.”

“He didn’t,” Sam Cornish said then checked himself. No names had been released on that California raid; he wasn’t supposed to know about Foley. A slight tinge of fear rose inside him and he suddenly realized how easily he could betray himself, and how fatal that would be. His mind raced.

“I got word from some mutual friends that he was back in action again,” he managed. “I don’t know much else, but I did hear he was back in action.”

That seemed to satisfy the other and he let it drop, looking around. “Several familiar faces here,” he noted, “and a few who might just be familiar. I think a lot of plastic surgery has been done.”

“And a lot of years have passed,” Sam pointed out. “Less hair, dental work, and a decade can do a lot. I know it did for me.”

The dark man sighed. “Don’t I know it. This hair is grayer than it looks, and these wrinkles and vein pop-ups are constant reminders. What happened to us, I wonder? We believed so damned much in all of it. It’s not much better now than it was then, but here we are, here we all are, out of it and domesticated.”

Sam knew what he meant better than the other understood himself. Here, on this plane, were a bunch of overage radicals, ages from the mid-thirties to almost fifty. From their college days and into their mid-twenties they’d been committed, fanatical firebrands, but, slowly, and not usually from a clear cause as his had been, they’d retreated from the front lines. The job was left to the newer, younger radicals whom they didn’t even understand, couldn’t even talk to.

“I think it’s a lot of things,” he said. “In my case I was just plain tired. After all, I’m human, like you, like everyone. You can only hit, run, live forever fearing the knock on the door, in a constant state of tension, for so long. It gets to you the older you get.”

The other man shrugged. “I don’t know about that. I suspect it was as much our small numbers and lack of unity. We kept our groups very small to minimize betrayal, and that worked well enough, but we never got together, never got a common program, and, worse, were so far underground we couldn’t recruit our own replacements.” He grew less reflective, more serious. “I think that’s what this is all about.”