Martell had prayed for a tool of change, an instrument transcending descriptive projections. These new programs and displays gave him that power. He could project worldlines to find a path, however convoluted, that went where he wanted. Then media manipulation and news management could nudge reality to keep it close to the plan. These were balky tools in a simplistic push toward an objective—immensely more effective as fine tuning to shadow a projected path.
Martell glanced down at his control panel; the panel, the ghostly image of his gloved hand, and the decision contour were the only objects in this reality. This use of the computer interface was a far cry from simulated skiing, but it gave him a feel for the shape of the problem he could get no other way. A relief, too, from the gristmill of meetings, analysis, planning. If only he could join Siemens and Johnson in the thick of battle, actually doing something…
The coordinates showed he was on the high end of the economic insecurity spectrum, displaying axes of racial polarization, fear of violence, and resistance to change. He twiddled the national pride slidebar: the surface barely quivered. Nationalism had shot its wad. The primary was locked up, and Siemens and Pryor were so firmly tied to America-first jingoism that it wasn’t an issue.
Did the necks mean the zone split up-time? Martell brushed a button, and yellow snakes writhed, some shrinking, some growing. Yes: several pinched off, into independent trajectory sheaths. Interesting. He felt a tug at his beard, from his invisible left hand.
One dancing snake winked out of existence. Another shrank to a ball, skittered across the “violence” axis, and vanished. Martell froze the time, then rotated the viewpoint to swap out fear of change, bringing in time as his vertical axis. Easier to find where those sheaths went if he could see their slope.
The image twisted and turned. All snakes now, the central mass out of sight. The skittering ball stretched into a tube again, bending to horizontal along the “violence” axis, then ending abruptly. Still yellow, though. The trajectories had to go somewhere, they weren’t escaping.
Martell scanned up-time, then swapped axes, one after another. The model had used a lot of variables, but the simulation could only display three at a time, plus the color coding for the election results. Swapping axes showed different 3-D slices of the decision space.
Picking economic insecurity brought several sheaths back into view. Damn, one tube veered even further negative; he’d thought he was already looking at a worst-case region on that axis. That sheath ended in a bright red bulb. A Siemens landslide, but the economy in ruins.
One path headed steeply up the economic axis, toward the main lobe of the projection, the sick squash he’d started with. Martell tweaked his view to follow it. Yes it plunged right through the main lobe! His pulse quickened, his invisible palms tingled—an unexplored chute, so close to the current locus. Where did it go?
He made the old surface translucent, and the sheath was bright gold within it. A catastrophe transition—trajectories of the main lobe couldn’t reach the sheath directly. Even though the regions passed through each other in this projection, they were separated along some other dimension. That’s why he hadn’t seen this tube earlier: there was no natural path into the tube except the long, convolute route he had followed.
Beyond the trunk, the tube twisted up-violence, then swelled to end in a pale pink bulb. A Siemens victory; not a wide margin, but secure. Interesting, very interesting. Martell had explored zones ranging from a Pryor landslide to too close to call. This was a stable chute, assuring victory, and extremely close to current estimated conditions.
The long, complex path Martell had traced to this chute was worthless. He’d followed the contour of the chaotic zone; finding a specific trajectory through all those turns, much less guiding reality along such a path, was out of the question. If they could leap across the boundary—somehow jump directly into that chute, so close in this ghostly display…
Martell twisted the virtual controls, spinning the image until he defined the gap between the tube and the main lobe. Distant in two axes: racial polarization and fear of authority. Bizarre. Changes in those directions ought to make Siemens less popular. The numbers on his control panel showed that it would cut the primary margin, but it would secure the general election.
Risky. But so was this whole project.
With the right resources, you could do more than manipulate the news. With money, influence, iron will, and ruthlessness, you could shape history, forge events directly in the foundry of hell.
What would it take, to ramp up racial hatred and suspicion of authority? A riot, bloodily suppressed by Siemens’s Guard? The kindling was already in place in Houston. Sparking it would be easy. Grease a few palms, start whispering campaigns of resentment in the ghetto, of fear on the base. Organize a protest, put guns and liquor in the hands of the right hotheads. Martco’s security manager had busted heads in union disputes and the like. Loyal as hell, he could be trusted and he’d know what to do.
A twinge of pain knotted Martell’s stomach. Shiva’s blood, he was planning a riot! He’d been envying the others’ direct action, feeling guilty and impotent in his ivory tower Now he was going to play the puppet master, fanning the flames of racial violence to shape events.
Arjuna had refused to fight, at the beginning of the Gita. Krishna’s words seemed meant as much for Martell as for that ancient prince. “If, knowing thy duty and task, thou bidd’st / Duty and task go by—that shall be sin!” The words echoed through Martell’s mind, as he tried to find solace in them.
“One at a time, damn it!” Siemens’s voice cut through the clamor in the campaign headquarters. “Ann, what the hell is going on?”
“A riot in Houston, Rick. A mob attacked the Guard, the fighting got bloody. Couple dozen killed, lots more wounded.”
“The Guard overreacted?”
“Overreacted, hell. The media’s calling it a massacre.”
“Hey, there’s Andrews!” An aide pointed at a TV screens.
Johnson reached for the monitor. “…Let Siemens set the terms of this contest, but no longer. The party leadership pressed me not to bring up Siemens’s fascist record, but my conscience must speak. This bloody massacre exposes the racist, tyrannical reality behind the glowing words. His goose-stepping militia is the antithesis—”
Siemens slapped the controls, and the sound cut off. “Goddamn Andrews! You can’t trust liberals to stay bought. Get General Sinclair on the line, and then the Philadelphia Guard command. You, get a flight to Houston for Ann and me, and have Ramirez meet us at the airport. And someone call Martell.”
Johnson grabbed his arm. “Make that one ticket. I’m out.”
“You said you’d stay through the primary!”
“That was before your gunslingers mowed down a crowd! I’m not going to help whitewash this atrocity.”
“Don’t judge me by the actions of soldiers I never even met! Judge me by what I do to make sure it never happens again. I’ll deal with the Guard, but I need to talk to the community, too. I need your help for that.”
Johnson glared for a moment, then nodded. “OK, I’ll come with you. But my promises are off. I’ll set up a forum for you, I’ll listen, and I’ll decide.”
Johnson bit the end off a cigar and spit it into the gutter. They were standing next to their rental car, in the parking lot of Redeemer Baptist Church. “I don’t get it, Rick; why set this up and not bring the media in?”