Armageddon Crazy

"The poor bastards probably welcome any diversion from being shot at by Zapata Legion snipers with those nasty little Cucaracha missiles."

Supply sergeants pulled cases off the line at random and checked that the contents matched the manifest and had arrived intact. Mansard and Gadd strolled toward one of those inspections. The lids had been removed from four aluminum coffins. Inside, four Sony DL-70s nestled in beds of blue foam rubber. Jimmy Gadd blinked in surprise.

"Those are DL-70Cs. We've always been lucky to get the basic model. They don't have these anywhere in South America yet."

Mansard laughed. "Are you suggesting that our holy leaders are doing covert business with the heathen japper?" A thought struck him, and he looked sharply at Gadd. "You do know how to operate these new wonders from the rising sun?"

Gadd gri

Mansard looked askance at him. "Christ, no wonder I'm an alcoholic."

"You're losing your sense of humor."

"That's hardly surprising."

Gadd was looking at his watch. "Listen, things seem to be ru

Mansard nodded. The downside to all the technical largess coming to them via the military was that the production had been turned into a military operation. The disrespect and loose camaraderie that held together Mansard's team and turned them into a fiercely efficient unit when they wanted to be had clashed badly with the army technicians' concepts of organization and discipline. There was yet to be a fistfight, but screaming matches were a daily occurrence, and there had been one unfortunate incident that was already being referred to as the Donut Strike. One of the roots of the friction was that Mansard's people handled quality control and invariably had the last say. The military did not take kindly to being ordered around by civilians, particularly civilians who looked like hairy subversives. They were also not used to working with women. All women had been removed from the military in the first three months of the Faith-fid administration while Mansard had always taken a perverse delight in doing all the equal opportunity hiring that he could get away with.

Despite all that – and to Mansard's surprise – the work was slightly ahead of schedule. Those Christian soldiers seemed to get the job done if only by sheer weight of numbers. If nothing went weird on them and open warfare did not break out between soldiers and civilians, they could ground test the power rigs in four days. Charlie Mansard, despite his glib cynicism, was filled with a mounting excitement.

As they walked back to the limousine, Mansard started quizzing Gadd about the new Sony modification.

"What will it do to the color/light density?"

"Should beef it up."

"By much?"

"I haven't looked at the specs, but I imagine by quite a bit. This is Sony. They won't put out a new model just for the sake of it."

"So we could have ourselves an almost solid image?"

"Close."

Mansard clenched his fists gleefully. "Great. I've got real plans for this show."

Gadd looked at him curiously. "Do you know something that I don't?"

Charlie Mansard laughed. "Who knows? This is going to be the biggest sky image anyone's ever seen. We might just touch off the Day of Judgment."

Gadd snorted. "Your hired help have commented on how, these days, you seemed to think you're Hitler. We didn't think that you'd progressed to God. "

Mansard ignored the crack. "Nobody seems to have noticed that they're letting us play with dynamite. I mean, what happened when we put up the Four Horsemen?"

"There was a bloody great riot."

"I thought we were dead after that. I thought they'd close us down for sure and outlaw sky walkers as works of Satan. Instead, they hire us to build something four times as big. What they don't seem to realize is that we could get four times the reaction."

"The images will be out on the water. That should soften the impact a little."

"Quite the reverse. Remember, the barges will be moving. For those who are just busting a gut to believe in that kind of thing, it'll look like the Beasts of Revelations are advancing on the city. The final fall of Babylon-on-the-Hudson."

Jimmy Gadd looked at his boss suspiciously. "You're getting a little strange, Charlie. What do you think is going to come out of all this?"

For someone of his size, Mansard was almost coy. "I don't know. Maybe the fall of the government." Gadd shook his head. "You're working too hard."

Kline

Cynthia Kline was worried. It was four days since she had heard anything from Harry Carlisle. She was aware that a police officer might be called away to some situation in which it would be impossible to make personal phone calls, but there was something about his silence that did not seem to be quite right. She told herself, over and over, mat she was not simply being the kind of neurotic who needs a lover to phone her four or five times a day. It was some sixth sense, or maybe just an extension of her own instinct of self-preservation, warning her that things were taking a disturbingly odd turn. It had started with the predawn call summoning her to Astor Place. Harry had left first, and she had waited; she could not afford to be seen walking out with him. The drunken nights when she had been Longstreet's protegee had done enough to her reputation around the building. She had sat on the bed and smoked a cigarette before finally pulling on her topcoat and going out into the empty streets.

The scene at C86 had been one of near chaos. Laura, who had been appointed pro tern supervisor, explained that they were trying to contain a computer virus and sent her directly to her terminal. The monitor was flashing bizarre dialog boxes that insisted that she enter complex thirty-two symbol codes. She had never seen anything like it. She was simply some kind of interface. She had no idea what was going on. The monitors told her what to do, and she did it. She had no idea if the virus was wi

It was the not knowing what she was doing that quickly killed any kind of excitement or sense of participation. There might have been an epic cyberfight going on, but since she did not understand it, she could hardly feel a part of it. Hers was but to keyboard. After an hour, she was profoundly bored and resentful at being dragged out of a warm bed and away from Harry for such nonsense. It was quite possible that the dialog boxes and her increasingly resentful responses were nothing more than computer make-work, part of some demented deacon exercise.

On her first break, she had run into Laura in the rest room, and the second oddity had occurred. Laura, who had been staring at herself in the mirror as Cynthia had walked in, glanced up.

"Weird night."

"You can say that again."

"Do you even know what a computer virus is?"

Cynthia decided that the best thing would be to play it like an airhead. "I'm not sure any of them really know what a computer virus is."

There was a pause as Laura worked on her makeup. She wore a great deal by the standards of the time and place. She looked at Cynthia's reflection in the mirror. "Are you still going out with that cop?"

"Uh-huh."

"You know it's not too smart, don't you?"

"I know that. I've been thinking of breaking it off, but I do kind of like him."

Laura was preparing to leave. "I'd look after myself if I were you. That cop of yours may not be around much longer."

Cynthia's head turned sharply. "What do you mean by that? "

Laura obviously realized that she had said too much. She was already on her way to the door. "Nothing, honey. I just meant that he has a knack of getting himself into trouble."