“You’ve been deputized!” she tells him, straightening his coat. “Report to Commander Flashman at once!”
She motions over her shoulder, to where Clip Flashman is standing some ten feet away, his own silver space helmet hanging from his belt, handing out badges and signing autographs for a gaggle of excited children. At her voice, Clip raises his head, checking her back, then returns his attention to his eager fans. Bell hears the artificial click of shutters, digital cameras rattling off photo after photo. A lot of the lenses seem to be focused on the redhead.
“And you are?” Bell asks.
She takes a step back in surprise, reappraises him critically. “Lieutenant Penny Starr, citizen!”
“I see.”
“Earthlings.” Penny Starr tosses her blood-red hair, rolls her eyes. “You’re so provincial.”
“No doubt.”
She studies him, head to toe, as if evaluating his status as a recruit. A couple voices are calling out to her, asking for photographs, but she doesn’t break focus. Finally, she straightens, snapping off a crisp salute.
“As you were,” Penny Starr says, then pivots smartly on her toe and moves quickly back to Clip’s side. Bell can’t help watching as she goes, as she is immediately surrounded by a second throng of admirers, these almost entirely male, almost all of them of the young-adult-and-up variety. He absolutely understands the attraction.
“A hit with the boys,” Bell says.
“And some of the ladies, too,” Marcelin says. “We’re an equal-?opportunity provider, so to speak. This way.”
Bell follows as they enter the police station, sneaking one last glance back at Penny Starr and Clip Flashman before stepping out of the sunlight and heat. The interior is like the exterior, some remembered ideal of a police precinct. A boy of perhaps eight or nine is seated on a bench to their left as they enter, raining tears in silence, a silver-haired man in a blue blazer resting on one knee in front of him. Don’t you worry, the man is saying. My parents used to get lost all the time. We’ll find them.
Marcelin moves to an unobtrusive side door, painted to blend in with the wood-paneled decor, passes his ID badge over some unseen sensor hidden in the wall. There’s the nearly subsonic thunk of a magnetic bolt releasing, and Bell steps through after him.
The illusion of WilsonVille shatters, and shatters utterly. The hallway they’re standing in now is concrete, the flight of stairs Bell ascends galvanized steel, and, as they reach the second floor, the room they enter is, in every way, modern. Banks of video monitors line either side, more than twenty people staffing them, headsets on and entirely focused on their screens. Voices overlapping, all speaking softly, recording and reporting, and a quick check tells Bell that at least one-quarter of this surveillance is dedicated to the park’s entrance-the exterior promenade, ticket booths, and approach. The steady thrum and whir of electronics fills the background, unseen fans working to circulate air for people and machines.
Marcelin stands, silent, while Bell takes in the command post. Bell walks the room slowly, peering over one shoulder, then another, to monitor after monitor. They’re using video primarily, images in color, high-res, though Bell is certain the cameras must have some low-light or even night-vision capacity for after the sun goes down, for those dark corners. A full bank of sixteen separate screens monitors the park’s perimeter, effectively covering every possible angle and approach. One terminal monitors air quality at multiple locations, both within attractions and facilities as well as out in the open. Another station is devoted to thermal imaging, recording results from six cameras placed along the promenade and just inside the main gate. One after another, people pass the lenses, oblivious, and one by one, their body temperatures are recorded.
“What’s the trigger?” Bell asks the woman working the station.
“One-oh-one. That’s for summer. One hundred in winter.”
“And then?”
She steals a glance away from her monitors, one eye narrowing in suspicion. “I’m sorry, who are you again?”
Marcelin glides forward. “This is Mr. Bell. He’s with me.”
“If they trigger, protocol is to radio one of the units on the gate. We pull the guest out of line and escort him to the doctor’s office on the square.” She looks from her monitor to Marcelin, seeking some sort of permission, which he grants with a slight nod. “We screen for SARS or swine flu or whatever bug the CDC may be warning us about at the time. If you’ll excuse me, I need to be concentrating on this.”
Bell thanks her, turns back to the air quality station.
“Chem-bio?” he asks.
Marcelin nods. “And radiation. It’s the Spartan II system, I think it’s called. There are sensors placed throughout the park.”
“It’s that comprehensive?”
“You name it, it’s searching for it. Ricin, tabun, sarin, mustard, cyanogen, phosgene, ethylene oxide, even botulinum. The list goes on and on.”
The hint of a frown on Bell’s face. Most of these agents, he knows their vectors, has studied them, has studied their effects. He’s had to, can think of at least two dozen times in the past decade that he and his team had to deal with one or another of them. Botulinum, too, but to his knowledge no one has ever been able to weaponize it yet, and thank the gods and goddesses of warriors everywhere, because botulinum is the True Nightmare Scenario, beyond even anthrax or sarin or any of their cousins. Aerosolized, weaponized botulinum makes its biotoxin cousins look like they’re still playing in the sandbox.
Marcelin can read his expression. “You don’t like it?”
Bell chooses his words carefully. “I don’t know the system. But you’re describing a wide search, and it makes me wonder if your Spartan, in trying to do it all, may not be doing any of it well.”
Marcelin shakes his head slightly. “I’d love a better system, but as far as we know, it’s not being manufactured, not even at the military level. Agent- and vector-specific monitoring systems were considered post-nine eleven, but the cost was prohibitive, both in equipment and manpower.”
“I can imagine.” Bell can, too, but he suspects another factor at work as well. WilsonVille has gone to great lengths to keep its visitors from knowing they’re being watched. More monitors, more sensors, more cameras would be that much more difficult to hide. They would shatter the illusion, and in WilsonVille, Bell already understands, the illusion is everything.
At another station, a video is reversing, showing a young man surreptitiously yanking what looks to be a Lilac doll down the front of his pants. The screen flickers, shows real time, and the young man is now tete-a-tete with a much larger, but just as young, gentleman in a WilsonVille blazer and khakis. They leave the camera’s view together, and Bell notes that at no time did the WilsonVille employee put a hand on the shoplifter.
“He’ll bring him here,” Marcelin says in Bell’s ear. “We’ll have someone from the Irvine police department meet them.”
“You press charges?”
“We always press charges. Let’s go into the conference room.”
“So here’s the job,” Marcelin says. He’s sitting in almost the same posture, the same manner that he had earlier in the day, in his office. The chairs in the conference room are Aerons as well. “Deputy director of WilsonVille park safety. Salaried position, starts at five hundred and fifty K, and of course that gives you free year-round passes to all Wilson Entertainment venues for yourself and your family. Medical, stock, etc., we can discuss later. The job is six days a week, you get six weeks’ paid vacation annually, and paid sick leave. You would report to and work under the director of park and resort safety, Eric Porter.”