"Now, to the agenda. First, a report on the rationing program. Citizen Brooks—"
Erasmus was barely listening—making notes, verging on doodles, on his pad—as the discussion wandered, seemingly at random, from department to department. He knew it was intentional, that Sir Adam's goal to was to insure that everyone had some degree of insight into everyone else's
business—transparency,
he called it—but sometimes the minutiae of government were deathly boring; he had newspapers and widecasters to run, a nagging itch to get out in front and cultivate his own garden. Nevertheless he sat at ease, cultivating stillness, and trying to keep at least the bare minimum of attention on the reports. Tone was as important as content, he often felt: You could often tell fairly rapidly if someone was trying to pull the wool over your eyes, simply by the way they spun out their words.
It was halfway through Fowler's report that Erasmus began to feel the first stirrings of disquiet. "Construction of new reeducation centers is proceeding apace"—Fowler droned portentously, like a well-fed vicar delivering a slow afternoon sermon—"on course to meet the goal of one center per township with a population in excess of ten thousand. And I confidently expect my department to be able to meet our labor obligation to the Forestry Commission and the Departments of Mines and Transport—"
Did I just hear that?
Burgeson blinked, staring at Fowler and his neighbors.
Did I just hear the minister for prisons boast that he was supplying labor quotas to mines and road-building units?
The skin on the back of his neck crawled. Yes, there were a lot of soldiers in the royalist camp, and many prisoners of war—and yes, there was a depression-spawned crime wave—but handing a profit motive to the screws stuck in his throat. He glanced around the table. At least a third of the commissioners he recognized had done hard time in the royal labor camps. Yet they just sat there while Fowler regurgitated his self-congratulatory litany of manacles refastened and windows barred.
That can't be what's going on,
he decided. I
must have misheard.
Next on the agenda was Citizen Commissioner Reynolds's report—and for this, Erasmus regained his focus and listened attentively. Reynolds wasn't exactly a rabble-rousing firebrand, but unlike Fowler he had some idea about pacing and delivery and the need to keep his audience's attention. "Thank you, citizens. The struggle for hearts and minds continues"—he nodded at Erasmus, guilelessly collegiate—"and I would like to congratulate our colleagues in propaganda and education for their sterling work in bringing enlightenment to the public. However, there remains a hard core of wreckers and traitors—I'd place it at between two and eight percent—who cleave to the discredited doctrine of the divine right of kingship, and who work tirelessly and in secret to undermine our good works. The vast majority of these enemies work outside our ranks, in open opposition—but as the party has grown a hundredfold in the past three months, inevitably some of them have slipped in among us, stealthy worms crawling within to undermine and discredit us.
"A week ago, Citizens Fowler, Petersen, and I convened an extraordinary meeting of the Peace and Justice Subcommittee. We agreed that it was essential to identify the disloyal minority and restrain them before they do any more damage. To that end, we have begun a veterinarian process within our own departments. Security is particularly vulnerable to infiltration by saboteurs and former revenants of the Crown Polis, as you know, and I am pleased to say that we have identified and arrested no fewer than one hundred and fifty-six royalist traitors in the past three days. These individuals are now being processed by tribunals of people's legates appointed by the Department of Law. I hope to report at the next cabinet meeting that the trials have been concluded and my department purged of traitors; when I can make such an announcement, it will be time to start looking for opportunities to carry the fight to the enemy." Reynolds smiled warmly, nodding and making eye contact around the table; there was a brief rumble of agreement from all sides.
Erasmus bobbed his head: but unlike his neighbors, he was aghast. Among the books Miriam Beckstein had lent him the year before, he had been quite taken aback by one in particular: a history of revolution in the East, not in the French Empire-in-being in the Russias, but in a strange, rustic nation ruled by descendants of Peter the Great. The picture it painted, of purges and show trials followed by a lowering veil of terror, was one of utmost horror; he'd taken some comfort from the realization that it couldn't happen here, that the bizarre ideology of the Leninists was nothing like the egalitarian and democratic creed of the Levelers.
Was I wrong?
he wondered, watching Citizen Commissioner Reynolds smiling and acknowledging the congratulations of his fellow commissioners with a sense of sickness growing in his belly:
Is corruption and purgation a natural product of revolutions? Or is there something else going on here?
His eyes narrowing, Erasmus Burgeson resolved to order some discreet research.
It wasn't a regular briefing room: They'd had to commandeer the biggest lecture theater in the complex and it was still packed, shoulder-to-shoulder with blue and brown uniforms. Security was tight, from the Bradleys and twitchy-fingered National Guard units out on the freeway to the military police patrols on the way in. Everyone knew about the lucky escape the Pentagon had had, if only via the grapevine. The word on the floor was that the bad guys were aiming for a trifecta, but missed one—well, they
mostly
missed: Half a dozen guards and unlucky commuters were still awaiting burial in a concrete vault with discreet radiation trefoils once Arlington got back to normal. But nobody in the lecture theater was inclined to cut them any slack. The mood, Colonel Smith reflected, was hungry. He tried to put it out of his mind as he walked to the podium and tapped the mike.
"Good morning, everyone. I'm Lieutenant Colonel Eric Smith, lately of the air force, seconded to NSA/CSS Office of Unconventional Programs, and from there to an organization you haven't heard of until now. I've been instructed to bring you up to speed on our existence, mission, and progress to date. I'll be happy to take your questions at the end, but I'd be grateful if you could hold on to them for the time being. Just so you know where we're going, this is about the attack yesterday, and what we—all of us—are going to be dealing with over the next months and years."
He hit the remote button to bring up the first slide. The silence was broken by a cough from the audience; otherwise, it was total.
"For the past year I've been seconded to a black ops group called the Family Trade Organization, FTO. FTO is unlisted and draws on assets from Air Force, NSA, FBI, CIA, DEA, NRO, and the national laboratories. We're tasked with responding to a threat which was only identified thirteen months ago. That's when this man walked into a DEA office in Boston and asked for witness protection."
Click.
A new slide, showing a polyethylene-wrapped brick of white powder, and a small metal ingot, side by side on a work-top. "He was carrying a kilogram of China White and a hundred-gram lump of plutonium 239, which we subsequently confirmed had been produced in one of our own breeders. This got our attention, but his story was so crazy that DEA nearly wrote him off as a kook—they didn't take the plutonium brick seriously at first. However, it checked out."