Jack Chalker - A War of Shadows

“Thank you,” he said, drinking a bit.

“And what stands in the way of this conspiratorial group?” the President asked him. “If what you say is true, then it would seem that they’ve won.”

Jake Edelman looked up at them and smiled. “The friends of Mickey Mouse,” he said.

Most of them met with blank stares, but Attorney General Gaither and Admiral Leggits both looked up in surprise. Wainwright looked at them quizzically.

“An underground group,” Gaither explained. “Using the most elaborate codex device we’ve ever seen. We’ve identified a number of them, but the codexes are self-destructing and they’ve been deep-probed and conditioned, all of them. Dig deep enough and you turn their minds to garbage, but you don’t get any information.”

Wainwright was intrigued. “Why Mickey Mouse?” he asked.

“That’s what their leader sounds like over the phone,” Leggits put in. “I almost interrupted a conversation in the Pentagon. He was a good officer, too,” he added, a trace of sadness in his voice.

“And you are a friend of Mickey Mouse?” Wainwright asked Jake.

The Chief Inspector shook his head from side to side. “No, Mr. President, I am not. I am Mickey Mouse.”

There was an uproar. It took more than a minute to calm everybody down. Wainwright was still in command here, though, and still confident. After all, Edelman was here. Alone. But that very fact suggested that there were things still to know, things that would make him admit everything openly and sign his own death warrant.

“All right, Inspector, let’s play no more games,” Wainwright said. “What are you trying to tell us?”

Edelman reached into his case and brought out a blue spray can. It looked very much like the one on the front pages of all the newspapers—a spray aerosol can in baby blue.

“When we first discovered the truth, we created our organization, feeling that if one agency could use government and bureaucracy, then so could the other. Most Americans, even those in positions of relative power, find the current emergency abhorrent. When shown evidence of this conspiracy, they are only too willing to help fight it. My team raided Camp Liberty a week ago, several days ahead of your anonymous tip. We also raided the NDCC bunkers, and we have made a lot of changes at Dugway Proving Grounds, and moved a lot of stuff. Further, loyal researchers at NDCC and NIH have been working on a problem for me for a month, since before I even guessed the scope and breadth of this thing. Ever since I discovered the computer models for the Wilderness Organism, from the day of O’Connell’s and Bede’s kidnap. We worked on it, discovering just exactly the correct sort of radiation necessary to make the Wilderness Organism cultures mutate slightly. And what do you know? They found not only the mutating method, but at the same time the simple, quick treatment killed the bacteriophage! We then wiped the Wilderness Organism clean out of the computers, to avoid making your mistake.”

H W Secretary Meekins was the first to see it, and she was appalled. “You mean that current strains won’t disappear in a day? They’ll continue to live and multiply?”

Edelman nodded. “And they’ll be mutated, beyond the vaccine’s effectiveness. There will be no defense. Oh, don’t worry. It won’t destroy the world, I’m assured. There is sufficient radiation from the sun alone to mutate it into harmlessness in a matter of a few days. But, I think, a few hundred strategic releases all over the country will be sufficient to eliminate most human life in North America.”

Again they were in an uproar. Wainwright’s eyes kept going to the blue cannister in Jake’s hand. “That can—that is the new stuff?” he asked nervously.

Edelman felt much better. That question was what he’d waited for.

“Yes, it is. This is the stuff that makes you feeble-minded,” he told them cheerfully. “Washington wouldn’t even notice. This spray can alone is sufficient to, say, infect the entire White House area if I push the little wax-sealed plunger here. See?”

Many were on their feet now. The Secretary of State started for him, angry and panicked, but was stopped by two of his fellows.

When they’d calmed down again, Jake continued. “The friends of Mickey Mouse have the cylinders.

I don’t even know who they are, nor does anybody know them all. We’ve all been deep-probed and blocked, so I haven’t any idea how anybody would know. We voted on it—you remember voting, don’t you? We decided that we’d rather have death for us and our children than live under your new order. Man will survive. But we won’t. And you won’t. And if I don’t walk out of here, at the proper time, they will know your answer.”

Wainwright was shaken, as were the others. None of them could take their eyes off the small blue can in Jake Edelman’s hand.

“And you expect us to surrender, to expose ourselves?” Wainwright said. “Hell, man, you might as well push that button. We’re dead anyway.”

Now it was Jake Edelman’s turn to smile. “No, sir, I do not. What I propose is a simple compromise, the art of political expediency. We have the names of all the Institute personnel. It was simple, once we cracked your computer code. We will be watching you. But—here is what I propose you do. I propose you change that speech of yours for tomorrow. I propose that, instead, you outline the plot exactly as you were going to—use the same scapegoats you intended to, except keep it to the dead and those quickly silenced. Then announce that the plot has been completely and thoroughly broken. Democracy is saved, freedom is restored. Slowly you will lift the state of emergency, and all constitutional guarantees are back in force right now. The computer ID system will be phased out. Military controls will be lifted. Slowly, the country will return to normal. Tell the people that Abraham Lincoln suspended constitutional guarantees during the Civil War, and instituted military government to save the nation, as you have. He then ended those measures; now you will, too. Slowly, over the next year, the majority of you in this room will retire or leave for better opportunities. After all, Mr. President, you’re nearing the end of your second term. It’s natural. You’ll retire a hero, an elder statesman. They’ll sing songs and write epic plays about you.

“Hell, they’ll probably build a giant granite statue of you on the Mall as a hero like Lincoln, and put you on the dime, you son of a bitch.”

Wainwright looked thoughtful. His eyes now left the blue cannister for the first time, going to the others in the room.

“Comment?”

“He’s bluffing!” one of them said. “We’re so close, we can’t give in now!” another echoed. But the majority had more pragmatic looks on their faces. Finally Wainwright exhaled and turned back to Edelman.

“We’ll have to check this, you know,” he said.

Edelman smiled. “Try and find a blue cannister, or a Wilderness Organism,” he invited. “Try and find the models. Your five-person team at NDCC are all dead now. They—ah, committed suicide.”

Wainwright gulped. “Leave that can there, for analysis,” he said.

Edelman shook his head. “Uh-uh. I need it with me. Find your own, if you can,” he said, and got up.

“Where do you think you’re going?” somebody asked.

“I’m going home, to a wife I haven’t seen in two and a half weeks,” he said wearily. “And tonight I’m going to wine her and dine her and romance her like there’s no tomorrow. And then I’m going to sleep. And when I wake up, I’m going to turn on my television and watch your speech, Mr. President. That’s what I’m going to do. I won’t be hard to find if you want me.”