Allen Steele - Jericho Iteration

Working for his dad as the Big Muddy’ s photo chief was just a day job for Jah, and a temporary one at that. His real ambition was to move to California and go to work for Disney or LucasWorks, and every cent he earned from his grumpy old man went to buying more hardware and software to feed his obsession. For this, the University of Missouri basketball coach was crying bitter tears; Jah stood about six-ten in his stocking feet, plus or minus a few extra inches of dreadlocks. He was hell on the half-court-I once made the mistake of playing one-on-one with him after work for a dollar a point and lost half a day’s take-home pay-but Jah would rather dick around in virtual reality while blasting old reggae and techno CDs at stone-deaf volume.

I had no problem getting the extra press invitation from Jah; he was involved with his latest project and really didn’t want to go out to west city just to take pictures of business types swilling martinis. He loaned me one of the paper’s Nikons, loading a disc into the camera for me and reprogramming the thing to full-auto so that I wouldn’t have to futz around with the viewfinder menu, and gave me a spare necktie from the pile next to the disk processor, thus making the disguise complete. A tie with a washed-out denim shirt would look a little strange where I was going, but formal wear for news photographers usually means that they changed their jeans today.

“Got a minute to look at this?” he asked when we were done. He held up the VR helmet. “Sort of a documentary … you might like it.”

I shook my head as I pulled the camera strap over my shoulder. “Catch me in the next episode, okay? I gotta book outta here before your pop finds I’m missing.”

He looked disappointed but nodded his head. “I hope you’re not fucking with him. He’s kinda pissed at you these days.” He glanced at the door as if expecting to see the elder Bailey’s shadow lurking in the stairwell. “Fact, man. He’s been talking about making some changes ’round here, if you know what I mean.”

I didn’t like the sound of that, but neither did I have time to further inquire what Bailey and son discussed over the dinner table. “Believe me, I’m not trying to fuck with your dad. I’m just trying to-”

“Hey, that’s cool.” Jah held up his hands, keeping his distance from the bad vibes between his father and me. “So long as you come back with some shots for next week, we’re solid.”

“Sold for a dollar.” We elbow-bumped, then he headed back to his workbench as I made for the basement door, avoiding taking the stairs back to the office.

John was waiting for me across the street from the office, leaning against the hood of his Deimos. “I don’t think Pearl missed you,” he said in reply to my unasked question as he dug a remote out of his pocket; the Pontiac’s front doors unlocked and pivoted upward. “He’s busy editing the arts page for next week.”

“Fine with me.” I walked around to the passenger side and slid into the seat as John took the driver’s seat. “I just talked to Jah, though. He says Pearl’s thinking about making some staff changes.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it.” John pressed his thumb against the ignition plate as the doors closed; the car started up as the seat harnesses wrapped themselves around our bodies. “Pearl’s always talked that way,” he said, opening the steering column keypad and tapping in the street address for the Tiptree Corporation. “When he had his band, he used to say the same thing whenever he had an off night. Y’know … ‘That drummer sucks, I gotta get a new drummer before the next gig.’ That sort of thing.”

“Uh-huh.” A map of metro St. Louis appeared on the dashboard screen, a bright red line designating the shortest course between us and our destination. “How many drummers did the Howlers have?”

“Umm … I think I lost count,” he murmured as he eased away from the curb. “But that doesn’t mean it’s the same thing-”

“Yeah. Okay.” John was trying to be candid and comforting at the same time, yet I couldn’t refrain from glancing up at the second-floor windows as we headed down Geyer toward Broadway. I couldn’t see Pearl, but nonetheless I could feel his angry presence.

Something had better come out of this field trip, or I was screwed.

The main office of the Tiptree Corporation was located on the western outskirts of St. Louis in Ballwin, not far from the Missouri River. We took Route 40/I-64 until downtown faded far behind us, then got off on the I-270 outer belt and followed it until we found the Clayton Road exit. By now we were in the gentrified suburbs, where subdivisions and shopping plazas had replaced farms in the latter part of the last century. The quake had destroyed most of the flimsier tract homes and cookie-cutter malls that had been thrown up during the building boom of the eighties; bulldozers and backhoes could be seen from the highway, completing the demolition of homes and stores that had been initiated by New Madrid. Architectural Darwinism: quakes kill buildings, but only the sick and feeble ones.

John briefed me on Tiptree along the way. The company was a relative newcomer in the computer industry, one of the many that had been started during the late nineties as a result of the seventh-generation cybernetic revolution. Unlike other companies, though, Tiptree had not gone after the burgeoning consumer market for neural-net pocket computers or virtual reality toys. Instead, it had become a big-league player in the military aerospace industry, albeit a quiet one.

“Name a major Pentagon program,” John said as we drove down Clayton, “and Tiptree probably has something to do with it. It’s a major subcontractor to the Air Force for the Aurora project, for instance. Now-”

“You have reached your destination,” a feminine voice announced from the dashboard. “Repeat, you have reached your -”

Tiernan stabbed the navigator’s Reset button, hushing the voice. We had already spotted the company’s sign, a burnished aluminum slab bearing the corporate logo of a T transfused with a stylized oak tree. “Now they’ve delivered on their largest contract yet,” he continued as he turned right, following a long driveway just past the sign. “Want to guess which one?”

I was studying the plant itself, seen past ten-foot-high chain mesh fences artfully obscured by tall hedges. It was your typical postmodern industrial campus: a long white three-story edifice surrounded by tree-shaded parking lots and some smaller buildings, unimaginatively designed by an architect who probably collected old calculators as a hobby. If Tiptree’s headquarters had been damaged at all by the quake, they had been rebuilt quickly; there were a few scaffolds around one end of the main building, but that was the only indication that the company had been affected by New Madrid.

“Umm … a player piano for the Air Force Academy?”

John smiled but said nothing as he pulled to a stop in front of a gatehouse. A uniformed private security guard walked out to the car and bent low to examine the invitation John held up for him. He stared at me until I showed mine as well, then he nodded his head and pointed the way to a visitors’ parking lot on the east side of the main building.

“Does the name Project Sentinel ring a bell?” he said as we drove toward the designated lot.

I whistled; he glanced at me and slowly nodded his head. “That’s what this is all about,” he went on. “They designed the c-cube for the satellite … that’s command, control, and communications. The bird’s being launched from Cape Canaveral at noon, so it’s show-and-tell day for these guys.”

“Probably more show than tell,” I said. “And you think this ‘ruby fulcrum’ business has something to do with-”