Jack Chalker - A War of Shadows

“But what about the Soviets?” somebody asked. “Or the Chinese?”

The tactician smiled. “Right now both of those countries are straining to demonstrate that they have nothing whatsoever to do with the attacks. At all times the leadership of the United States, whether in present hands or ours, will have control of the nuclear arsenal. The Chinese are not postured for a first-strike iniative on the United States in any event. The Soviets have finally managed to get two generations by without war. We feel they will welcome the revolution as an alternative to nuclear confrontation. At first they will see us as friends and allies. We will welcome them as such, and send home with them little delayed-action presents, again not attributable to us. We feel that if we can accomplish internal revolution in America, it will be that much easier in the U.S.S.R.”

Cornish saw what he meant, although he sincerely doubted the end result. No matter what the risk of nuclear confrontation, though, there was the specter of horrible plagues marching, first on the great cities of the United States, then across densely populated Europe and the Western Soviet Union. The leaders of Camp Liberty were fanatics, that was for certain. The kind of people so committed to the idea of total revolution that they would never even dare permit the hard questions to be asked.

And willing to massacre half the human race in the name of the Cause, a cause they could only vaguely define.

The man on the plane had been wrong; it was not like the old days. It was the same blind, mindless devotion to undefined revolutionary principles, yes, but where ten could only dream themselves a threat to power, this network of who-knew-how-many thousands could cause the massive death and chaos that revolutionaries of the old days only dreamed about.

And, in further lectures, they unfolded their long-range plans. Massive liquidations of the middle and upper classes; a return of the citizens of the world to a controlled subsistence economy, a world of happy peasants with none above.

Somehow, he thought, it all sounded like a return to the New Stone Age.

Ten days after he first saw Suzanne Martine on that podium she came to him. He was just lying there in his hammock, looking over a manual on a new Czech sniper rifle they were going to be issued, when she walked in.

“Hi, Sam,” she said softly.

The book fell slowly. “Hello, Suzy,” he managed.

She smiled and looked him over approvingly. “You haven’t changed all that much. A little older, a little more hair on the face and a little less on the body, but that’s about all.”

He didn’t know what to say, so he echoed her. “You haven’t changed a bit. How long have you known I was here?”

“I saw you the first lecture,” she told him. “I couldn’t believe it was you at first, so I checked and checked and kept sneaking peeks to see if it really was. Then, as soon as the indoctrination was over, I got here as quickly as I could.” She stared at him again unbelievingly. “What the hell are you doing here, Sam?” she asked.

So many emotions jumped up and down in him that he didn’t know what to say or do. There she was, standing there, and he wanted her again, even after all this time, even though he’d walked out on her before. Wanted her, and feared her, too.

Suddenly he had it. “Penance,” he said dryly.

She chuckled, then suddenly grew serious once again. “Why did you walk out, Sam? Where’d you go and what did you do? And why?” She sat down on the canvas floor of the tent, looking up at him.

Honesty, to a point, was the best policy, he decided. “I had a crisis of faith,” he said slowly. “I really believed in us, in our group, in our ultimate motives. I never once minded ripping off a bank or an insurance company or like that. We were fighting for those people who never had any money to put into a bank or buy insurance. Hell, I wouldn’t have minded if we’d knocked off Congress. But—we knocked off 386 innocent, ordinary folks and Congress and the President and Wall Street just went on and laughed at us. It was like, well, going out to assassinate the President and winding up snatching purses from little old ladies on Social Security. It blew my mind, and I had to get myself back together again. I had a —a breakdown, I guess. Like the kid who finds out there’s no Santa Claus right on Christmas Eve. I couldn’t handle it.”

He could see in her face that she was trying to understand but couldn’t, quite.

“You knew what terrorism was all about,” she said, not accusingly but questioningly. “To achieve the greatest goals for the greatest number of people, some have to perish. The innocents were martyrs to the Cause; they died so that their children and neighbors and their children could have better lives. That’s the principle of terrorism. That’s how a very small group becomes a force huge enough to topple governments.”

He nodded. “I know, I know. But, Christ! There were sixty-four kids on that plane! Children! It blew me away.”

“And yet you’re here,” she noted.

He nodded again. “Yes, I’m here. I’m here for a lot of reasons, Suzy. I’m here because I’ve spent ten years rotting in a commune in New England not thinking or accomplishing anything. I’m here, too, I guess, because there’s a goal in sight. What did we accomplish by knocking over the stuff we did? Federal fugitives, exile, death, that’s all. No rocking the corporate boat, nothing. This time we can accomplish something. This time it’s make-or-break. We’ll see the results or we’ll die. That’s something I can get a handle on, work for. I never lost my dreams, Suzy, only my feeling of doing something worthwhile.”

She seemed to accept that, although he still was certain she hadn’t understood the logic. It was a good story, a convincing story to explain his presence here—one he and a number of experts had worked long and hard on.

One that was very close to the truth.

For the first time, lying there, looking at Suzy and seeing the organization of Camp Liberty and the enormity of their plan, he began to wonder whether or not he didn’t really want to be reconverted. He yearned for the comradeship, felt thrilled by being an instrument of history.

And he wanted her. Just sitting here, after all these years, with Suzy this close, he was totally turned on.

She seemed to sense it; she softened. “Come on, Sam. You’re not due for anything else today. Come with me over to my quarters. Get some air conditioning and some decent food.”

He went with her, although air conditioning and food were not really on his mind at all.

She lived in one of the quonset hut structures. This one had small but comfortable individual rooms, air conditioning, and storage space.

“How did you wind up here?” he asked her.

She flopped on the too-narrow bed and sighed. “After the big bang, they caught Knapp and shot Crowder to death. You walked out and vanished, and the rest of the group panicked. We split, saying we’d get together at such-and-so, but we never did. I took the pipeline to Havana first, then to Iraq, finally to Thailand—mostly training guerrillas, recruiting and organizing women’s brigades, things like that. When this came up and the word went out, well, hell, of course I volunteered.” She paused, and her voice lowered. “But I missed you, Sam.”

She was undressing slowly now, and he followed suit. He wanted her, wanted her badly; it was the only thing in his mind.

And hers.

And yet, when the preliminaries were finished, he couldn’t do it. He wanted to, but something just went out of him. He couldn’t follow through, make himself stay in that aroused state.

It’d been like that for years. He’d always told himself that it was because of Suzy. Now he found that, even with her once again, he was emotionally short. It upset him, disturbed him.