Suddenly the public-address system blared out through the cafeteria, the feminine voice high-pitched and clearly excited. “Attention, all personnel. Attention, all personnel. We have a Stage One Alert. All personnel report to your duty stations immediately.”
“Stage One!” Shirley exclaimed as they both raced for the door. “That’s a full-scale emergency. What’s happening?”
It’s Eric! Nicole nearly shouted out loud, her heart soaring with relief. But she just shook her head quickly and broke into a trot toward the Central Monitoring room.
When they reached the room, Travis was already there, a phone in one hand, staring at the monitoring board above the blue-and-orange computer consoles. Three lighted panels were blinking brightly.
Three! Nicole stared. If they had removed three implantations at the same time, they’d be slowed down considerably and highly vulnerable to capture.
And then, even as she slid into her chair, the big board clanged sharply and a fourth set of flashing letters began to wink on and off.
WARNING! WARNING! WRIST COMPUTER #116543, DONALD LEON BROWNLEY, HAS BEEN SEVERED. TERMINATION VOLTAGE SEQUENCE NOW INITIATED. DONALD LEON BROWNLEY IS NO LONGER READABLE VIA WRIST COMPUTER.
“Four now!” Travis shouted into the phone, then spun around to Shirley and Nicole. “Eric’s back. They’ve removed four implantations. Nicole, I need a tracking on where they were when the wrist computers were severed.”
“Right.” Her fingers began to fly across the terminal keyboard.
“Shirley,” Travis barked, “pull up personal data files on each of these people and stand by.”
“Yes, sir.”
At Nicole’s command the computer searched its massive brain with breathtaking swiftness and fed the data to the screen. For one split second, she thought about delaying the data for Travis in order to give Eric even a small margin of time, but then she rejected the idea. Eric had specifically warned her against doing anything that would give her away. Even as the letters began flowing across her screen, she called out to Travis. “Richard Dawson was at the Kooska Mill and Lumber Company, 345 Green Street. That’s in the northwest sector.”
“Kooska!” Travis shouted, stabbing his finger at the flashing lights on the board. Nicole looked to where his finger pointed and saw the next two names, Stanley R. Kooska and Darla B. Kooska.
“Check the last one, check Brownley.” Without waiting for her response, Travis picked up the phone again. “Units Two and Four, Code Three to 345 Green Street. Watch for any vehicles or personnel fleeing the vicinity.”
He turned back to stare at Nicole’s monitoring screen, where the impersonal brain was spewing out the information on Brownley’s location at the time of severance. But before it had finished, another sharp clanging shattered the silence.
WARNING! WARNING! WRIST COMPUTERS #124667, #124668, #137125, AND #138976, CHARLES KEITH METCALF, DAWN JOANN METCALF, LISA RAE METCALF, AND JAMES CHARLES METCALF, HAVE BEEN SEVERED. TERMINATION VOLTAGE SEQUENCES NOW INITIATED.
Travis swore softly, the first profanity Nicole had heard since she was a small child. But it wasn’t Travis that had her shocked attention. She too stared at the screen. A whole family. Four at the same time. And that was in addition to the other four. But before she could comprehend what that meant, the flashing lights on her screen reverted to the message on Brownley’s tracking.
Travis, looking over her shoulder, burst out with another expletive. “Brownley’s somewhere else!”
“Yes,” Nicole answered with a cool precision that in no way revealed the exultation sweeping through her at that moment. “This time it’s in south central sector, 1461 Page Lane. That’s the home of—”
“The Metcalfs!” Travis exclaimed. “That means they have two operating teams.” Again he began to bark orders into the phone, sending additional teams racing to the second site.
“Captain Oakes,” Shirley broke in, “I have the data files on the first four.”
“Good. Read them out to me.”
Before she could speak, the door to Central Monitoring flew open and the Major strode in, his face red. He stopped and stared at the flashing board. “What?” he shouted. “Eight!”
“Yes,” Travis said quickly, “done in two different locations. I’ve got teams on the way to both places right now.”
“I can’t believe this!” the Major shouted.
“Shirley is giving us a run-down on who’s been operated on.”
“Proceed,” he snapped, not turning away from the screen.
“Richard Dawson,” Shirley began to read in a timid voice, “age twenty-five, male, Caucasian, single, born in Toledo, Ohio, came to Shalev—”
“Yes, yes,” Travis prodded. “Just give us his name, age, and occupation for now.”
“He’s a medical student, presently in his internship at Shalev General Hospital.”
“A doctor!” Travis cried out. “Who’s he doing his residency under?”
“I don’t have that here. Just a moment.” She punched some keys. “Dr. Chester Abernathy, sir.”
“Abernathy!” the Major exploded. “I should have known.”
“What about the others?”
“Stanley R. Kooska is forty-seven and owns his own lumber mill. His wife does their bookkeeping. Brownley is a chemistry professor at the Technical College and is also a partner in the Flathead Chemical and Fertilizer Company.”
“I have the Metcalfs,” Nicole said. “Care to guess who the other partner in Flathead Chemical and Fertilizer is?”
“So,” the Major said, stepping back to glare at the monitoring board, which was now nearly covered with flashing lights, “they’re tapping their close associates. That’s how they choose their next victims.”
“But why take the whole family?” Travis said, staring at Nicole’s screen.” The girl is sixteen, the son eighteen. Why take them?”
“I can answer that,” Nicole replied. “I heard them one night on the radio. They said they’d take only single men or whole families, in case you tried to apply pressure through their relatives.”
“Thus providing a very close and tight-knit group,” the Major added.
“The teams should be arriving at the two locations any moment now,” Travis said. “Maybe we’ll catch them.”
“Don’t count on it,” the Major snapped back at him. “Eric’s no dummy. He knows how swiftly we can pinpoint the locations. He’s got some kind of transportation away from the site, and he’ll fix them up someplace else.”
“They must have found additional heavy-duty bolt cutters,” Nicole volunteered. “All four of the Metcalfs were cut so close to the same moment that the computer registered them all at the same time.”
“Yes,” the Major said. “But now they’re going to have to fix their people up. They have eight bleeding people; they’re not going to be easy to hide.” He glanced up at the clock. “Nicole, how long ago was it when the first person was severed?”
She punched a button again, recalling Dawson’s profile. “Dawson was cut at 3:13, nearly eight or nine minutes ago.”
“Okay,” the Major said. “They can’t have gone far. Travis, tell your men to start cordoning off both sectors. Once they are secure, begin a house-to-house search. I want every garage, every basement, every possible hiding place covered.”
“Yes, sir.”
The phone rang sharply, and Travis snatched it up. “This will be the first team reporting in now, sir.” He jammed the phone to his ear and barked, “Captain Oakes speaking…Yes, put him on.” He covered the mouthpiece. “It’s Captain Burton from Serenity. I—yes, this is Captain Oakes. Hello, Cal, what is it?”
And then his face blanched. “What?” he shouted. He listened for a moment longer, then stared at the Major. “Burton is in Serenity’s Central Monitoring Center, Major. They’ve just had five wrist computers severed there. All of them are people from Eric’s village.”
By 6:30 that evening, Central Control looked l
ike a castle under siege. Orange-uniformed men and women rushed here and there, their faces drawn, stopping to share the latest shock of news in hurried whispers. The call from Serenity had come in at 3:22 P.M. At 3:29, Travis’s first group commander called to report that the Kooska Lumber Mill and surrounding areas were deserted. At 3:31, his second commander reported that the house on Page Lane was likewise empty except for some bloodstained sheets and four wrist computers and implantation chips on the floor. Neighbors reported that a brown van had driven off swiftly a few minutes before the Guardians arrived.
At 3:44, Captain Burton called again from Serenity to report six additional removals, all family members of the previous five.
At 4:17, Shalev General Hospital sent in a fire alarm. A small blaze had started in the basement laundry. It was quickly contained, but ten minutes later a shamefaced corporal rushed into Central Control to report that while he and his men were downstairs fighting the blaze, two men in orderlies’ uniforms entered Cliff Cameron’s room, stunned two Guardians into unconsciousness, and disappeared with Dr. Cameron.
At 5:11, the monitoring board clanged again. WARNING! WARNING! WRIST COMPUTER #G2632, JOSEPH PAUL JENSEN, HAS BEEN SEVERED. TERMINATION VOLTAGE SEQUENCE NOW INITIATED. JOSEPH PAUL JENSEN IS NO LONGER READABLE VIA WRIST COMPUTER. TERMINATED SUBJECT WAS A MEMBER OF THE GUARDIAN STAFF. Shirley Ferguson went white. Joe was a corporal on the city patrol, and he and Shirley had been dating steadily long enough that the office had been buzzing about a potential marriage. With a long face but soaring heart, Nicole called that bombshell to the Major, who had gone to his office with Travis to try to get ahead of the escalating crisis.
At 5:15, even as Nicole was still trying to find out where Joe Jensen’s duty station had been, a call, almost incoherent, came from the sergeant in charge of a road checkpoint leading north out of Shalev. A large truck covered with a tarp had pulled up to the checkpoint. Just as the sergeant and one of his men yanked back the tarp to reveal a mass of people huddled in a hollowed-out pile of lumber, a man with a stun gun had sprung from the thick underbrush on the side of the road. That was surprise enough for the sergeant, but worse still, one of his own men had joined the stranger in attacking the other Guardians. When the sergeant came to, his tires were flattened, his radio shattered, two of his men were still unconscious, and the third had fled with the truck and the people. The traitorous Guardian? Corporal Joseph P. Jensen.
And finally at 5:57, a patrol near Hungry Horse Dam called in to report they had found the abandoned lumber truck hidden in a stand of pines. Numerous horse tracks were found around the truck and disappeared into the forest.
Even Nicole was reeling by the time the Major burst back into the Monitoring Room at 6:30, Travis at his heels. The Major seemed under perfect control again now, but Travis was looking hounded, his face strained and lined with weariness. The Major came straight to Nicole and thrust a paper into her hand. “I want this to go out on all wrist computers immediately.”
“Yes, sir.” She cleared her terminal and pushed the keys that would set her up for a general broadcast to all citizens of Shalev. Only then did she look at the paper. Her eyes widened, and she looked at the Major.
“Send it.”
“Yes, sir.” Her fingers punched away even as her mind pictured the effect this was going to have throughout the city.
ATTENTION, ALL CITIZENS. EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY, SHALEV IS UNDER A STATE OF EMERGENCY. RETURN TO YOUR HOMES AT ONCE. ALL WORK AND RECREATIONAL ACTIVITIES ARE HEREBY TERMINATED FOR THE EVENING. SERVICES AND ACTIVITIES OF A CRITICAL NATURE THAT ARE EXEMPT WILL BE NOTIFIED IMMEDIATELY. ALL OTHERS MUST BE IN THEIR HOMES BY EIGHT P.M. FAILURE TO COMPLY WITH THIS ORDER WILL TRIGGER THE PUNISHMENT MODE IN YOUR WRIST COMPUTERS. REPEAT, AUTOMATIC PUNISHMENT MODE WILL RESULT FOR ALL CITIZENS FOUND OUTSIDE THEIR HOMES AFTER EIGHT P.M. UNLESS ON EXEMPT STATUS. A GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENT AND FURTHER DETAILS WILL BE GIVEN ON THE TEN O’CLOCK NEWS THIS EVENING.
When she was finished, the Major nodded. “Nicole, there will be a special meeting for all section heads at 9:00 P.M. in the general conference room. I’d like you to be there. Also, I want you to contact the president of the AFC, the mayor of Shalev, all city council members, the editors of both papers, and the directors or presidents of both the radio and television stations in Shalev. They are all to be in attendance. This is not optional.” He spun on his heel and strode out, Travis right behind him.
“Wow!” Shirley said softly, leaning back in her chair.
“Yes,” Nicole answered. “Wow indeed!”
Chapter 29
“Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention?”
The Major’s request was totally superfluous and about five seconds too late. The moment he entered the conference room, the excited babble of hushed voices came to an immediate halt. Now every eye was on the somber face.
“I have a brief statement to read,” the Major said, letting his eyes sweep across the faces in the room. “After that, you may ask questions.”
Roy Hartford, editor of the Shalev Daily Herald, lifted his pencil to his small notepad. The movement caught the Major’s eye.
“Roy, I’ll have copies of the statement for each of you when you leave.”
“Good. Thank you.”
The Major lifted a paper and adjusted his glasses slightly, looked up once more, then began to read in a clear voice, enunciating each word carefully.
“‘A state of grave crisis exists in the city of Shalev and throughout the Alliance of Four Cities tonight. The security and peace of our society face a challenge potentially more deadly and destructive than at any time in our eighteen-year history. Therefore, as authorized in section nine, article four of the Laws of Incorporation of the Alliance of Four Cities, we hereby declare a formal state of national emergency and put the entire Alliance under martial law.’”
He paused to let the ripple of shock flutter through the assembled group, then went on firmly. “‘Beginning at 8:00 P.M. this evening, a state of emergency went into effect. It will remain in effect until further notice. Under martial law the following rules will be in effect: One. All civil government in the AFC, including the senate, the courts, and elected officials, will be temporarily suspended, and the Guardians will assume all governing powers until further notice.’”
Nicole saw the stunned look Peter Dobson, president of the AFC, gave Estelle Hardy, Shalev’s mayor, and heard the exclamations of dismay even as her own mind reeled.
“‘The Commander-in-Chief of the Guardian forces will be the chief executive officer and director of government. He is directly responsible for all law, all policies, and all enforcement of the same for the duration of the state of emergency.
“‘Two. For as long as martial law is in effect, all citizens of the AFC are on restricted movement status. All travel outside the city of residence is forbidden without a written permit from the Guardians. A strict curfew will be in effect from 8:00 P.M. until 6:00 A.M. each day. Only those with evening or night employment or those carrying special permits will be allowed outside their homes during those hours. All noncritical activities and services will cease until further notice. Violation of the curfew or travel restrictions will be subject to the Punishment Mode response via the wrist computer.
“‘Three.’” If the Major was aware of the battering effect his words were having on the group, he gave no sign. “‘Beginning at 8:00 A.M. tomorrow morning, all citizens of the Alliance not now implanted will report to their nearest hospital for Stage Two implantation.’” He went on swiftly, overriding the startled cries from the senior Guardian officers. “‘This will include all family members of the Guardian staff, heretofore exempt, and all Guardian personnel in noncritical positions. Lists of exempt personnel will be given to Guardian commanders immediately after this meeting. Failure to report for implantation will warrant maximum Punishment Modes.’”
Maximum! Maybe the others in the room didn’t understand what that meant, but every Guardian did. Maximum me
ant termination voltage. Nicole looked up at Travis and flushed. It was an effort to keep her face expressionless, for her mind was hurtling through white-water rapids of thought. Monitors were classed as critical personnel, so she was under no threat personally. But her aunt would be implanted, and that made her stomach drop. Then she saw Clayne Robertson sitting in front of her, and she felt ill as her mind leaped to Adrienne and Sarah and Timmy.
Eric’s final sardonic comment as he slipped out the back door Saturday night had been, “I think it’s time to see if we can bloody the Major’s nose a little, goad him into action.” He had gotten his reaction all right, and Nicole felt a burst of despair. Eric was underestimating the Major. Shalev had just been clamped down so tightly that Eric’s rebellion would be crushed like a bug under the wheels of a juggernaut.
“The fourth rule,” the Major continued, cutting into her thoughts, “will be in effect, but is not included in the official statement. It will not be announced to the people, but will affect some of you in this room directly. The fourth order of action is that during the state of emergency all media reports—broadcasts, press reports, any announcements—must first be approved by a special public communications committee in Central Control.”
“No!” Roy Hartford of the Herald had leaped to his feet. “You can’t do that!”
The Major sighed. “Roy, of all the requirements of this sordid mess, that one causes me the greatest sorrow. We have never had censorship of the media in Shalev.” His voice grew suddenly hard and cold. “But Eric Lloyd is depending on the media to make him into some kind of twisted folk hero, to turn the hearts of this people so they support him. To some degree, that has already been happening. The media are partially responsible for generating a base of action for Lloyd and the other criminals who have joined him.”