The Spartacus File

Chapter Seventeen

Rose didn't like her assignment. She didn't like it at all.

Casper wished Colby had asked Tasha or Ed or one of the others to help him instead, but they weren't around or weren't willing, and Rose had been agreeable right up until Casper had explained where he wanted her to go.

Now, though, she wasn't happy.

“When Colby said I should help you out, I thought you just wanted me to, like, put things in the bank, or sign checks, or stuff like that,” Rose said. “Nobody said anything about talking to reporters.”

“You don't have to talk to any reporters,” Casper assured her. “You just drop this disk off at the station, with the note. You don't have to talk to anyone. In fact, the fewer people you talk to there, the better.”

“Well, how do you know they'll put it on the news, then?” she demanded.

Casper just smiled. “Don't worry,” he said. “If they don't we'll try again.”

Rose wasn't crazy about that idea, either, but she didn't want to be unreasonable. She picked up the little pouch with obvious distaste, and left.

Casper and Cecelia watched her go.

“Just what are you trying to accomplish, Casper?” Cecelia asked.

“I'm trying to take over the country,” Casper said, quite sincerely. Cecelia snorted derisively.

“I thought you just wanted to stay alive,” she said.

Casper shrugged. “They programmed me to overthrow the present regime and set up an American-style democratic government-a real one, not the oligarchy we have now. I'm trying to oblige them.”

“You do anything like that, and they will kill you,” Cecelia retorted.

“They're going to kill me anyway, if I let them.”

“They've lost track of you, haven't they? Why can't you just stay underground?”

“Because first off, they're going to keep looking; and second, they programmed me not to. I didn't just get an ordinary imprint, where I can use it or not as I please; I got optimized, and the optimization's got compulsions built into it. I'm compelled to rebel against the present government, and authority in general.”

“Then don't you have to rebel against your programming, too?”

Casper smiled. “I am,” he said. “They programmed me to stage a violent revolution-armies, battles, death and destruction. I'm not going to do it that way, because it won't work here.”

“But you're still trying to take over the country?”

Casper nodded.

“You're nuts.”

“Maybe,” Casper agreed. “Or maybe I'm as sane as anybody. Sure, I'm following the programming from the Spartacus File, but why is that any crazier than following the patchwork programming we all build up from our parents, and our genes, and our schools and friends and jobs?”

“Because it's going to get you killed.”

“Not if I can help it.”

“And what makes you think you can?” she demanded angrily, her hands on her hips. “Casper, you say they've programmed you to be the new Spartacus-has anyone pointed out to you that Spartacus died? The Romans crucified him! He died on a cross on the Appian Way-I looked it up. So are you planning to wind up nailed to a cross somewhere on the Jersey Turnpike?”

Casper blinked at her, surprised and pleased by her anger. He took it to mean that she still cared for him; he'd begun to wonder. Since his optimization he and Cecelia had been drifting apart; they shared a bedroom upstairs, courtesy of Colby's housing arrangements, but they hadn't done much but sleep in it. Cecelia didn't seem to like the new, more assertive Casper Beech as well as she'd liked the wimpy original.

“More likely a bullet-riddled corpse in the Schuylkill River,” he said. “And no, that's not what I want-but Celia, it's too late to stop now. They're already determined to kill me.”

“Are you sure? ” she asked, and he thought her eyes looked moist. “Are you sure that's not their damn program, telling you that, making you assume they're after you, when they aren't?”

“They did try to kill me,” he said. “They started it. They came after me before I'd done anything, before I had any idea what they'd put in my head. Why would they stop?”

“I'll make them stop,” she said. “I can do that, Cas-I'm a lawyer, and a damn good one. It's a matter of political economics, a P.R. problem and a legal problem. If we make it too expensive for them politically, they won't kill you. You don't have to take over the fucking country, Cas! If you do that they will kill you.”

He stared at her thoughtfully.

“You know,” he said, “I think we may have come up with the same answer to two different questions. The first step in my campaign is to make it too politically expensive to kill me. After all, dead men don't win elections. They may vote in them in Chicago, but they don't win them.”

She stared back. “Is that what you meant when you said that video is the first step in taking over the country?”

He nodded. “It's the next step in my campaign to stay alive,” he said.

“But it's just a bunch of ordinary loony-fringe rhetoric, half socialism and half libertarianism.”

Casper grimaced. He didn't think his speech was “loony fringe rhetoric"; he'd thought it was fairly reasonable populist stuff. Boring, but reasonable.

That wasn't the point, though. “That's just cover,” he said.

“What are you talking about? You put some sort of coded message in there?”

He shook his head. “No. Look, you know there's no way they're ever going to put that whole video on the news, right? Maybe on C-SPAN 4 or something, but not on the news, not even on CNN.”

“Of course not,” Cecelia agreed. “They'll maybe pull a soundbite or two.”

“Exactly. And I wrote that speech so there's only one soundbite worth pulling. Maybe one or two of the networks will miss it, but sooner or later it'll go out.”

Cecelia gaped in astonishment. “You mean you made the speech boring on purpose?”

“Sure.”

“So what's the soundbite?”

“You didn't catch it?” For the first time since making the vid, Casper looked worried.

Cecelia looked embarrassed. “The speech was boring, Cas; I didn't watch it all the way through.”

“It's only ten minutes.”

“I lasted about two, okay?”

Casper shook his head in amazement.

“Okay, okay,” Cecelia said. “What's the soundbite?”

“You'll hear it on the news, I hope,” he said.

She had to be satisfied with that.

Bob Schiano looked up suddenly when the newscaster mentioned “wanted terrorist Casper Beech.”

What had they been saying? He hadn't been listening. Had Covert finally nailed Beech, despite Schiano's lack of help? Despite, in fact, his active assistance to Beech in the form of the file he'd e-mailed?

Or had Beech struck somewhere, and begun his revolution?

And there was Beech's face on the screen, and by the quality of the picture it was a home project, not anything there at the studio.

“The government says I'm an escaped terrorist,” Beech said, and his voice and manner carried intensity and conviction as he spoke, even with the poor reproduction. He hadn't looked anywhere near so alive in the old interview files Schiano had seen. “I say they lie,” Beech continued, “and I say that I'd surrender if I thought I'd live through it.”

Then it was cut short.

Schiano stared at the screen. “What the hell was that about?” he wondered aloud. That wasn't anything he'd programmed, so far as he could see. Oh, the attitude was from the charisma subroutines that he'd incorporated, the stuff from Behavioral Sciences and Psychwar, and it was good to see that it seemed to be working, since Schiano himself didn't understand how any of that functioned; the delivery was great, but the words were wrong. Saying the government lied was fine, but Beech should be looking for recruits at this point; he shouldn't be talking about surrender, he should be talking about inevitable victory.

What was he doing?

“God damn it!” Smith said. He turned to his aide. “Get a dozen men down to that station now -I want that disk. I want to know everything there is to know about how it got there. And I want to know what idiot put it on the air without clearing it-either that, or who cleared it!”

“Yes, sir.”

“And get Schiano up here! I thought Beech was supposed to be recruiting the bums and winos we've been rousting, not making video speeches!”

“You think that'll do it?” Cecelia said. “Just that? I didn't see anything like that in the file you showed us.”

She was seated at one end of an old couch, Mirim at the other, with Casper in the middle holding the remote control.

“No, of course not,” Casper said, hitting the MUTE button. “It's just a start, something to get people interested in my case. The next step is a rally.”

“A what? ” She turned to stare at him. “Casper, are you crazy? You can't go out in public yet! The next step is a lawsuit.”

Casper shook his head. Just like a lawyer-if all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail, so lawyers always wanted to use the courts. “No, Celia,” he said. “If we try to do it that way, I'll be shot resisting arrest, or trying to escape, or maybe I'll just have an unfortunate auto accident. They have to kill me, just the way Rome had to kill Spartacus. The idea that a slave could rebel and live was too dangerous for Rome to ever let Spartacus live; he had to win or die. It's not quite the same for me; they're big enough they could let a mere rebel live. But I'm not just a rebel, I'm the rebel leader they made, and they can't let me live. I have to win or die. And I'm not going to win with a lawsuit!”

“Why not? ” Cecelia insisted. “If we get a court order…”

“Celia, it won't matter. They aren't going to play by the rules. They don't want me in jail, they want me dead.”

Cecelia subsided unhappily and slumped back on the couch; then, abruptly, she stood up.

“Do it your way, Casper,” she said. “You think you know it all now, you believe everything that programmer put in your head and you won't listen to me, and you've got Mirim there acting like your damned cheering section, oh you big strong male, she's always liked ‘em tough and stupid, like Leonid, so she'll go along with you without stopping to think. Well, I'm not ruled by my hormones, or by some Covert Operations programmer grinding out software that's never supposed to get used in the first place, so he doesn't care how good it is! I'm not going to throw away everything I know and do what this miracle file says! I read your ‘Sparta-doc’ file and what that Schiano said you could do, and I don't believe it. They can't imprint that much. You suit yourself, Casper Beech, but it won't work. It's insane, holding a rally and trying to take over the country! It can't be done, but you can make a deal to save your own sorry ass, if you'll let me set it up. And when you realize that, if you're still alive, when you realize you've been an idiot, if you ask me nicely, then maybe I'll do my best to save you.”

She stamped away.

Mirim and Casper watched her go. Casper frowned.

“I think I'll be sleeping on the couch tonight,” he said. Then he turned to Mirim and said, “and if you were thinking of inviting me into your bed, thanks, but not yet. Let her cool down first.”

Mirim's mouth opened, then closed. She stared at him for a moment before she found her voice.

“And what if I wasn't thinking of inviting you?” she said.

Casper smiled wryly. “Well, then I've misjudged the situation and by bringing it out in the open now I may have just saved everybody some later embarrassment.”

Mirim smiled back at him. “You didn't misjudge,” she admitted.

“Well, good. Thank you. But I'll still sleep on the couch for at least two or three nights. We're going to need Celia's help later, after the rally.”

“After the rally?” Mirim asked. “You really plan to hold a rally?”

“Sure do.”

“How the hell are you going to do that? Isn't that just asking for a sniper to take you down?”

Casper smiled at her again, a big surprised smile this time. “Of course it is,” he said. “That's the point. We have to taunt them, make them act stupidly, and make them do it in front of an audience.”

“But Cas…”

“The real trick here,” he said, interrupting her, “is to live through it.”