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[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] "We'll be paralyzed. The Director must approve all inter-regional actions." "We could appoint an Acting Director," Boweto said, poker-faced. Malekoff threw his hands up. "Eventhat would have to be approved by the Director! We are hamstrung!" Boweto said nothing for a long moment. Malekoff, fidgeting, rummaged through his pockets until he found a silver cigarette case and lighter. "I didn't know you partook of the vice." BEN BOVA " 340 "Only in private," Malekoff said, puffing a long, light brown cigarette to life. He blew out a cloud of smoke. "And under extreme stress." Boweto nodded sympathetically. "We shall have to tell him, no matter how great a shock it is to him." "His staff won't let anyone near him," Malekoff said. "We will have to force his staff to give way. The government of the world cannot remain hamstrung, as you put it, because of one sick old man." "Itwill kill him, you know," Malekoff said. Boweto shrugged. Malekoff puffed furiously on his cigarette. "Let me handle it," Boweto said at last. The World Government promises a wonderful future in which all men are brothers. But the hungry people of the world cannot wait for tomorrow. They are starving today. Already the opressed masses in the United States are rising to seize what is rightfully theirs. Four-fifths of the world's people are hungry, sick, uneducated, without hope. They are desperate. They do not want a World Government They want food, land, work. They are willing to fight for these elementary needs. We do not need a World Government, a huge bureaucratic barrier that protects the rich from the poor. We need smaller governments, individual nations that are responsive to the cries of their people. The poor of the United States are in arms. The poor of other nations will rise, also. If it takes bloodshed to break free of the World Government, so be it. The poor have nothing to lose. El Libertador,televised speech broadcast worldwide by satellite, 27 November 2028 THIRTY Page 189 Deep underground, more than a hundred meters below the crumbling old Pentagon's basement arcade, the real nerve center of the American military machine pulsed with intense electronic energy. Since the advent of the World Government and the strategic disarmament that followed, no national military force possessed nuclear or biological weapons, nor lethal chemical weapons. Armies were reduced to border patrols and internal peace-keeping functions. War was outlawed and the means for waging mega-death wars had been confiscated by the World Government. But this still left a panoply of weapons that would have gladdened the heart of any fighting man from Genghis Khan to George S. Patton: rifles, machine guns, cannons, tanks, pistols, bayonets, jet bombers, napalm, swift patrol boats, helicopters, tactical rocket launchers, armor-piercing heavy lasers, sonic janglers, strobe lights that could induce epileptic fits ... a long, long list of weapons. But the most useful, most necessary tool of the military was communications. Instant electronic links told the assembled, generals and colonels (and the dazed, bemused admirals among them) what was happening and where. The contiguous forty-eight states were spread out on a huge electronic map, winking with lights and coded situation reports. The map was so big that the tallest man in the underground Situation Center a very junior colonel from Mississippi who had starred on the West Point basketball 342 COLONY " 343 team was no bigger than the yellow-glowing area that represented Los Angeles. Much of the map glowed red, for danger. All the cities of the Northeast, from Boston to Cincinnati, were in red. Chicago was completely dark; nobody knew what had happened there. Communications had ceased hours earlier. Even the "absolutely secure" satellite communications link had gone off the air. "I told them," a one-star general kept muttering to the grim-faced men and women who scurried across the huge floor of the Situation Center. "My intelligence reports warned that this was coming. But they wouldn't pay any attention to me.'' Nobody was paying attention to him now. Hawaii, Alaska, Samoa, and Puerto Rico were on smaller maps on another wall. The first three appeared trouble-free. The rebellion had not spread to any of them. But Puerto Rico had already been abandoned, earlier in the day, its garrison flown to New Jersey, the island left to fend for itself until order was restored on the mainland. The situation was worst in the big old cities of the Northeast, although Los Angeles was a tangle of conflicting reports and St. Louis, Denver, Atlanta, and Houston were all in flames. Phoenix had been overrun by an avalanche of howling mobs that had wiped out the retirement centers inside of an hour or two. Dallas-Fort Worth was holding its own, with the Texas Rangers reinforced by the heavily armed local citizenry counterattacking street by street. Miami was strangely quiet, as was a good deal of the South. "Damned niggers control the cities there, anyway," said one of the admirals, who had nothing to do except watch the progress of the land battles. "Yeah, and they'll take in the refugees who get away from the cities under attack," said the colonel from Intelligence. "The blacks will take care of their own. We'll have a reverse Underground Railroad running a couple of days from now." Some cities seemed totally free of disturbances. Minneapolis reported nearly total calm, except for a few skirmishes near the airport. An unexpected early autumn BEN BOVA " 344 Page 190 blizzard might have saved the entire upper tier of Midwestern states. San Francisco was unaffected, also, except for a peaceful rally spontaneous, its organizers claimed to show support for the embattled minority groups around the nation. But Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis all the dying, decaying, old industrial cities were the scene of heavy fighting. Washington itself was under siege, although soldiers and Marines from the bases that ringed the nation's capital were now counterattacking and clearing the streets. Too late to save the White House from its second burning; too late to prevent the murders of most of the Congressmen and Senators who had remained in town for the holiday. But the military situation in Washington was definitely improving. "New York is the key," said the Chief of the Combined Staffs, a four-star general who wore all his ribbons on his tunic every-day. It was no different now. While others scurried about the Situation Center in shirtsleeves (even rolled-up shirtsleeves!), the Chief kept his tunic buttoned properly and his sleeves creased. "Remember your textbooks, gentlemen?" The Chief smiled grimly at the ashen-faced generals and colonels. "Remember how Marshal Zhukov let the Germans grind themselves to a bloody stump in the streets of Stalingrad while he built up his forces for a massive counterattack outside the city? How he surrounded von Paulitz's army and annihilated it? Well, that's what we're going to do with New York." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |