The Fall of the Republic (The Chronoplane Wars Book 2) Read online

  THE FALL OF THE REPUBLIC

  Crawford Kilian

  © Crawford Kilian 1987

  Crawford Kilian has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1988 by Legend.

  This edition published in 2017 by Venture Press, an imprint of Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI

  CHAPTER XII

  CHAPTER XIII

  CHAPTER XIV

  CHAPTER XV

  CHAPTER XVI

  CHAPTER XVII

  CHAPTER XVIII

  CHAPTER XIX

  CHAPTER I

  When his working day began at midnight, he did not yet know that he would kill a man before dawn.

  Rain was falling steadily. In his small apartment near the headquarters building at Mountain Home Air Force Base, T-Colonel Jerry Pierce sat down at the computer in the living room. It was one of the new Polymath machines, voice-actuated, with more artificial intelligence than any other microcomputer yet built.

  “Boot, Polly.”

  The monitor turned deep blue, and a small female figure appeared in the lower right comer of the screen. It was the image of a little girl wearing a frilly dress. Her blue eyes gleamed as she smiled.

  “Booted, Jerry.” Her voice was chirpy and friendly.

  “Give me a survey of the day’s disruptive incidents.”

  “Sure will, Jerry.”

  Apart from the corner in which the girl’s image stood, the screen began to flash page after page of dense text, at a rate of sixteen pages per second. Pierce watched without expression.

  The afternoon and evening had produced the usual events: assaults on police officers in Coeur d’Alene, gas-station robberies in Boise, the firebombing in Nampa of a food dispensary (idiots: how did they expect to go on eating?). A survivalist colony had fired on a National Guard patrol a few miles north of Ketchum; no casualties, but the colony would have to be interdicted.

  The twenty-seventh page flashed at him and he said: “Stop.”

  “Sure, Jerry.”

  It was a police report from here in Mountain Home. The body of Maxine Schultz, age seventeen, no fixed address, had been found in Room 204 of the Big Country Motel at 22:30 hours this evening, September 2,1998. Manager had looked in after a complaint from another tenant about noise, and had found the subject. Cause of death, to be confirmed by autopsy, reported to be strangulation. Subject had rented the room at 16:20 this afternoon. Manager had not seen her after that, alone or with anyone else. Homicide would be on the scene after investigating an earlier murder in a West 4th liquor store.

  “Damn!”

  Polly said nothing.

  “Damn.” Jerry Pierce stood up and walked across the living room, hands jammed in the back pockets of his Levi’s. He was tall, over six feet, with the build of a racing-shell oarsman. His hair was close-cropped, dark brown like his eyes. His straight mouth turned down at the comers now, and his jaw was harder than usual. His biceps bulged in a dark-blue golfing shirt.

  The room was a typical one for officers’ housing, with a blue shag rag and walls painted a flat white. Pierce had changed it only by installing the Polymath. At the far end was the dining area, and beyond it the kitchen. Pierce walked in, opened the refrigerator, and took out a cold Budweiser. Popping the can, he walked back to the computer.

  “Polly, give me the file on Social Security number 095-566-3122.”

  “Glad to, Jerry.”

  The screen gave him the seventeen sad years of Maxine Shultz’s life, from her birth certificate (father unknown) through the prescriptions for her childhood ailments to her social workers’ reports to her more recent criminal record. Her charges included prostitution, drug possession, weapons possession (firearm), weapons possession (knife), possession of forged ration stamps. Polly’s high-resolution monitor showed him Maxine’s mug shots, starting with one in Missoula at age thirteen and ending with another here in Mountain Home just a month ago: a pouting, acne-scarred blonde with intelligent eyes that grew steadily more cynical over the four years. Convictions: none since last spring, just before Pierce had arrived to take charge of the 23rd Military Emergency District. She had been one of Pierce’s most reliable sources; thanks to her, he had put away a whole ring of stamp counterfeiters, a cocaine distributor, and too many outside black marketers to count.

  Now someone had killed her, made her the third murder victim of the week in Mountain Home. Her parents might mourn her; more likely, when they got the news they would only feel sorry for themselves. Three or four other young hookers would feel bad about it, until they’d zonked themselves enough to forget her. No one else would care, except T-Colonel Jerry Pierce.

  “She was mine, Polly.”

  “I know, Jerry.”

  “I don’t like it when one of my people gets killed. I’m here to see that it doesn’t happen, right?”

  “Gee, sure, Jerry.”

  “Call Homicide. Right now.”

  The computer’s loudspeaker hummed softly, then clicked as the desk sergeant downtown picked up the phone.

  “Sergeant Anderson.”

  “It’s Pierce.”

  “Yes, Colonel.” Anderson was a solid cop, a professional: some of them revealed their dislike and distrust of Trainables, but not Anderson.

  “Where’s Bert Klemper? Still on West 4th?”

  “No, sir, he should be at the motel killing by now.”

  “Good. I’ll call him directly.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He told Polly to call the motel room. After one ring, Klemper answered.

  “Pierce.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Update me on this homicide.”

  “The manager found her on the bed, Colonel. No clothes. Facial abrasions. Severe bruising on the throat. Looks like she’d been doing business with somebody who couldn’t get affectionate without getting rough.”

  “Any prints?”

  “Not yet, sir. We’re still working on it. I’ve talked to two other tenants. They didn’t see anybody or hear anything until she started yelling about 10:20.”

  “Give this one top priority,” said Pierce.

  “Well, Colonel, the West 4th homicide was a law-abiding citizen, and this is just a hooker — ”

  “Top priority.”

  “Yes,' sir.”

  “I want reports every two hours until morning. Sooner if anything urgent turns up.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Thank you.”

  The loudspeaker clucked as Klemper put down the phone. Pierce finished the beer and tossed the can across the room into a wastebasket. Then he sat down again.

  “Okay, Polly. We’ve got work to do.”

  “Shoot, Jerry!”

  From the file on Maxine Shultz he branched out into scores of cross-references: her associates, their associates, her johns, their families. In the next fifteen minutes he reviewed hundreds of files.

  He took a short break, mulling over what he’d learned, pondering associations. Then he went into the files on unsolved homicides throughout the western United States and Canada in the last five years, flagging those of young female prostitutes in particular. The files were very long, especially in the last couple of years. Social and economic breakdo
wn always brought out murderous misogynists.

  At one o’clock he paused and rubbed his eyes. The computer hummed, announcing an incoming call. “Answer.”

  “Colonel, it’s Bert Klemper.”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ve got a nice semen smear. Should be able to get a fine DNA print.”

  “Get it to the lab at once. Wake the techs if you have to. I want the print filed as soon as possible.”

  Klemper’s voice suggested that he was catching Pierce’s hunger. “I’m on my way with it, sir.”

  Pierce slumped onto the cheap Naugahyde couch and put his feet on the coffee table. His subconscious was working on the data, correlating, comparing, eliminating. He was pretty sure that in those hundreds of files he had found the killer of Maxine Shultz, but it would take time and more data to confirm it.

  The room was quiet. Somewhere down the road, a Scout guard vehicle groaned on its rounds. Pierce studied the prints on the walls, anonymous motel-art renditions of squirrels and kingfishers. In the silence of the night, it was easy to forget that the whole country was coming apart, that across the republic thousands were dying every night in street fighting, food riots, holdups. Without people like himself, thousands more would die and the breakdown would come all the sooner.

  Five years ago, Training had been a half-understood new technique; now, Trainables were keeping the country, the world, from violent collapse. Five years ago he had been a kid in Taos, expecting to be drafted into the army as soon as he graduated from high school. But he had volunteered for Testing, and had been identified as one of the Trainable minority, the twelve percent or so of adolescents whose learning speed could be accelerated to computer-like rates.

  So he had gone into the army, all right, but as an officer candidate. His basic training at Fort Ord had lasted six hours; graduate work had consumed the next week, and he had been commissioned as a T-Major. After four months working in central and northern California, he had made Colonel. For the last six months he had been the de facto ruler of Idaho and eastern Oregon, subordinate only to the district’s Military Administrator, an un-Trainable general who kept out of Pierce’s way.

  At a little after 2:00 A.M., Pierce made himself a couple of corned beef sandwiches, with a plastic cup of coleslaw from the officers’ mess. While rain hissed on the yellow autumn grass outside, he sat eating at the dining-area table, looking at the glowing, empty screen of the Polymath.

  “I’ve got two possibilities, Polly.”

  “Yes, Jerry?”

  “This is a guy who just likes to kill hookers. That’s one. Or this is a guy who kills hookers who talk to the authorities. That’s two.”

  The little girl on the monitor didn’t move for a couple of seconds. When she did, the computer speaker said: “Oh, I see. You mean the person who killed Maxine Shultz.”

  “I should have made myself clearer.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m kind of slow on the uptake sometimes.”

  “I lean to the first possibility. Maxine was pretty careful about seeing me. She didn’t want a reputation as a snitch. And she wasn’t the kind of kid who talks just to impress people.”

  “Which possibility would be easier for you?”

  “The second. Then it’d be a matter of finding someone in the local underworld who doesn’t approve of government interference. But I think it’s the first. Someone who likes to kill hookers just for fun.”

  “I’m afraid so,” Polly answered with a sigh.

  “Okay, please correlate just the prostitute murders in District 23 over the last five years, solved and unsolved. Flag the ones involving strangulation.”

  The murders totalled eighteen. Four had been solved as the work of a single person, a soldier who was now in Fort Leavenworth. Three others had been traced to pimps or johns. The other cases were still open. This was the first one in Mountain Home in over a year; the others had been all over the district, with a cluster of six in Pocatello, ending about three years ago.

  Interesting. “Give me all males arrested in Pocatello for violent offenses in the last five years.” And the monitor began to flash twice a second, with mug shots and arrest sheets and disposition forms. Two hundred and sixty-two altogether; he began to eliminate them rapidly. In two minutes he had just eight men left. All but two lived in the Pocatello area. One of the others lived in Twin Falls, and the last in Mountain Home.

  That man had a conviction for assault against a prostitute in Pocatello (plea-bargained down from attempted murder, by strangulation). He’d spent two years in the new state penitentiary at Burley and was now out on parole in Mountain Home. Donald Dwayne White.

  “Give me his DNA print.”

  Ordinarily, Polly would have shaken her little finger at him and said, “That’s a no-no, Jerry!” But he had circumvented that inhibition; any medical record in the district was his for the asking.

  “Glad to, Jerry.”

  He studied the print sequence for a long time.

  “Now give me his psychiatric file from Burley.”

  The file was brief but to the point. A fairly typical sociopathic profile, predisposed to violence against women. The transcripts of White’s interviews with the psychiatrist were a tedious stew of lies, threats, sexual boasting, recollections of victorious brawls, and contempt for women in general and his mother in particular.

  Pierce had read this file before; early on in this job, he had reviewed the records of virtually every convicted criminal still alive in the district. White’s name had come intuitively to mind, but he had waited to test his intuition against the database.

  Klemper called and transmitted the DNA print from the motel. The match with White’s was anti-climactically perfect. Pierce said nothing about it to Klemper.

  “Okay, Bert. You’ve done good work. What’s next on your list?”

  “That’s it, Colonel. Want me to run some comparisons, see if I can find this turkey right away?”

  “No, leave that for the day shift. Have to get a warrant for a DNA comparison anyway. You get back to the West 4th homicide and clean that up.”

  Klemper sounded a little surprised. “Yes, sir. Want me to get back to you about that one, too?”

  “Yes, but I’m going out for a while. Just leave your messages with Polly.”

  “Will do, sir.”

  Pierce smiled. Klemper would be perplexed. First the motel killing had had top priority; now it could wait for morning. Well, Trainables were supposed to be temperamental, and tonight would provide Klemper with anecdotal evidence for that belief.

  Pierce sat and thought for a few minutes. Then he pulled on a turtleneck sweater and a rain jacket and went outside. The rain had tapered off to a drizzle. At the curb was his car, a government-issue Plymouth. He got in and started the engine; the radio blared into life with an ancient Hank Williams tune. The country was coming apart in big chunks, and everyone was very nostalgic these days. The past was safe and comforting, knowable. The present was a series of insults, disappointments, and frights. The future could only be disaster.

  “Well,” said the disc jockey with soft-spoken intimacy, “it’s 3:00 A.M. in KMVR country, time for a quick news roundup. Still no change in that hostage-taking in Denver. The People’s Action Front is demanding one hundred million dollars for the release of over three hundred and fifty high school students being held at Reagan High. The PAF says they’ll blow the school up at 8:00 A.M. if their demands aren’t met.”

  Pierce headed for the main gate, past darkened barracks. He knew the T-Colonel in charge of Denver, down in District 25. She wouldn’t get much sleep tonight.

  “The Senate is debating a bill to make Testing mandatory for everyone at age fifteen. Senator Rolland Johnson of Illinois says the bill will only create an elitist group responsible to no one. Senator Diane Cooledge of California, one of the sponsors of the bill, says Trainable young people are a priceless resource. The bill isn’t expected to pass.”

  Of course not, thought Pierce. Un-T
rainables were scared silly of people who could process information in a fraction of the time ordinary people needed and who could remember everything they learned. Trainables had answers before most people knew the question had been asked.

  “Good news for meat eaters! The Secretary of Agriculture says we could see an end to meat rationing within a year if farmers continue to build up their herds as they have been.”

  That was a laugh, thought Pierce. The build-up was mostly on paper, ranchers and farmers cooking the books for the sake of federal subsidies and the government letting them do it because the alternative was an outright revolt and worse food shortages than ever.

  Most livestock were too toxic for safe human consumption anyway. A year from now, rationing would be tighter than ever. Assuming a government still existed that was capable of enforcing the rationing.

  The newscast went on through two or three more items — a riot in Pittsburgh, brownouts through the Southwest, someone taking a shot at the mayor of Atlanta. The newscasts during the day rarely mentioned such events; the stories then were always about disasters overseas, like the current riots in Hong Kong or the civil war in India. You mentioned your own bad news when no one was listening, and then you were balanced. A media fog, they called it. The Soviets had made it an art form long ago, but it was too good an idea to be neglected by the West.

  He was out the main gate now, waving in response to the sentries’ snapped salutes. Highway 67 went straight into town past abandoned strip development: deserted McDonalds and Burger Kings, carpet stores with their windows knocked out, a supermarket guarded by two young recruits with M-21s concealed under their ponchos. They looked cold and miserable.

  Pierce drove through downtown, silent and deserted, and out Jackson Road to the eastern residential neighbourhoods. On a side street he parked and locked the car, then walked quickly and quietly three blocks north. This was a neighbourhood of small, shabby frame houses set back from the street behind waist-high cyclone fencing. The yards behind the fences were muddy and littered, with only here and there the remains of a summer garden. This was a working-class neighbourhood in a time and town when no one had work. For years, neighbourhoods like these had steadily rotted. People lived on unemployment, then welfare, bought lottery tickets (so dumb they’d even pay for their own fantasies of escape), did a little drugs, dealt a little drugs, scraped along. Sometimes they got busted and did a little time. It made a change.