9.

I guess they believed our story, somewhat at least. Fly and I were left alone at last when that rugged stalwart, Albert Whatever, scurried off on some er- rand.

Fly gestured me close. "We really should report in,"

he whispered in my ear.

"Report in? To whom?" A good question. If the country were as devastated as we'd been led to believe, there wasn't much of a military command structure left to report to anybody.

If. . . I saw at once where Fly was coming from.

"How much do we really know about these guys?"

asked Fly, confirming my cognition. "Whose side are they on?"

"You'd have a hard time persuading me they're demon-lovers," I said.

"All right . . . maybe. They're patriots. But are they right?"

Wasn't much I could say to that. Fly had a point. . .as patriotic and pro-human as these Mormons might be, they still might be wrong about the extent of the collapse. "You're saying they could be deluded by their apocalyptic religion."

He raised his brows. "Mormons aren't apocalyptic, Arlene. I think you're confusing them with certain branches of Christianity. I'm only saying that they're pretty cut off from information . . . the whole govern- ment might look like it's collapsed from this view- point; but maybe if we contacted somebody some- where else, in the Pentagon or at least an actual Marine Corps base, maybe we'd get a different pic- ture."

"All right. Who, then?"

"Chain of command, Arlene. Who do you think we should contact?"

I'm always forgetting about the omnipresent chain.

Usually, all I see are enlisted guys like me, maybe one C.O.-Weems, in our case. I'm not used to thinking of the Great Chain of Being rising above my head all the way up to the C-in-C, the President of the United States. Guess that's why Fly makes the big bucks (heh) as a noncom, while I'm just a grunt.

"Um, Major Boyd, I guess. Or the great-grandboss, Colonel Karapetian."

"Hm . . . I'm betting this is a bit above m'lord Boyd's head. I think we should take this up with G.o.d Himself: the colonel."

"I agree completely. Got the phone number?"

"Yeah, well, that's the next problem. Surely in a facility this size, there has to be a radio room some- where, wouldn't you think?"

We did a lot of thinking over the next hour; we also did a lot of quiet, careful questioning, staying away from those obviously "under arms," questioning the less suspicious civilians instead. But what we mostly did was a lot of walking. My dogs were barking like Dobermans long before we found anything radio- roomlike.

The "compound" actually comprised a whole series of buildings, different clumps far away, and included a large portion of downtown Salt Lake City. There were other buildings and residences all around, of course; SLC is big. Well not compared to my old hometown of L.A., of course, but you get the idea.

"The compound" might include two buildings and not include the building in between them; it wasn't defined geographically.

However, we quickly discovered we were restricted to a small, two-block radius surrounding the Taberna- cle. An electrified fence cut that central core off from the rest of the facility (and the rest of the city); guards patrolled the fence like a military base; there were even suspicious pillboxes with tiny bits of what might have been the barrels of crew-served weapons poking out, and piles of camouflaged tarps that might conceal tanks or Bradleys. And the guards were as tight about controlling what left the core as they were about what entered.

I saw a lump that looked suspiciously like anM-2/A-2 tank, state of the art; I turned to point it out to Fly, but he was busy staring at the tall office building at our backs. "What's that up top of that sky- sc.r.a.per?" he asked.

"Skysc.r.a.per? You've lived in too many small towns, Fly-boy."

"Yeah, yeah. What's up top there? That metal thing?"

"Um ... a TV aerial."

"Are you sure? Look again."

I stared, squinting to clear up my mild astigmatism.

"Huh, I see what you mean. It could be, but I'm not sure. You think it's a radio antenna, right?"

"I don't know what they're supposed to look like when they're stationary, only what they look like on the box we carry with us."

"Well, you have an urgent appointment, Fly? Let's check it out."

"Sure hope they have a working elevator," he said, surprising me; I thought after our experiences on Deimos, he'd never want to look at another lift again.

There was an armed guard at the front entrance of the building, which was a mere fifteen stories tall. . .

hardly a "skysc.r.a.per." The rear entrance was barri- caded. The guard unshipped the Sig-Cow rifle he carried. "Ayren't you the two unbelievers who claim they stopped the aliens cold on Deimos?"

"That's we," I said, "Unbelievers 'R' Us."

Fly hushed me. He always claims I make things worse in any confrontational situation, but I just don't see it.

"The President sent us on an inspection tour," said Fly with the sort of easy, confident lying I admired so much but could never pull off. "Supposed to 'famil- iarize' ourselves with your SOPs." He rolled his eyes; you could hear the quotation marks around familiar- ize. "As if we haven't had enough military procedures for a lifetime!"

The guard shook his head, instantly sympathetic.

"Ain't it the truth? Few weeks ago, you know what I was? I was a cook at the Elephant Grill, you know, up at Third? So what do they make me when the war breaks out? A sentry!"

"You know this building well?"

"Well, I should! My fiancee worked here. Before the war."

"Look, can you come along with us, show us the place? I come from a small town, and we don't have buildings this size. You're not stuck as the only guard, are you?" There were no other guards in sight; I'm sure Fly noticed that as well as I.

"'Fraid so, Corporal."

"Fly. Fly Taggart."

"I'm afraid so, Fly. I can't leave. Look, you can't get lost. It's just a big, tall square. See the Tabernacle there? Anytime you get lost, just walk to the windows and walk around until you see the Tabernacle. You can't miss it."

"You sure it'll be okay?"

"You can't miss it. No problemo.""Look, if I get in trouble, is there a phone I can call down here on?"

"Sure, use the black phone near the elevator, the one with no b.u.t.tons. Just pick it up; it'll ring here."

"Thanks. This way? The elevators over here?"

The helpful sentry showed us how to get to the elevators. They were actually behind some part.i.tions; we might not have found them ... for several min- utes.

We climbed aboard, and Fly said in a normal speaking voice, "Don't trust these elevators. May as well start at the top and walk down, floor by floor, familiarizing ourselves with the procedures. Then we can report back to the President and tell him where we'd do the most good."

To me, he used hand signals: Start top; find radio; broadcast report.

The antenna was atop the roof, of course; but that didn't mean that's where the radio room would be.

We wandered around every floor, trying to look official. Early on, I found a clipboard hanging on a peg in the rooftop janitor's shed, where they kept all the window-washing stuff. Fly took the clipboard and made a point of officiously writing down reports on everybody in every office, with me trailing along behind looking like his a.s.sistant.

It worked; people tensed up, stopped talking, worked diligently, and not a one confronted us to ask us who the h.e.l.l we were. It helped that Fly had been inventory control officer for a few months. He stirred them up and made them sweat.

Finally, twelve floors down from the top, we found the d.a.m.ned radio room. Two operators, both civil- ians. One had a pistol; we were unarmed, of course.

Fly strode in like Gunnery Sergeant Goforth on the inspection warpath. "On your feet," he barked; the startled operators stared for a second, then leapt to their feet and stood at a bad imitation of attention.

"Cla.s.sified message traffic from the President," he snarled. "Take a hike."

"Sir, we're not supposed to-"

"Sir? Do you see these?" He angrily pointed at his stripes. "Do I look like a G.o.d-d.a.m.ned pansy-waist gut-sucking a.s.s-kissing four-eyed college-boy officer to you?"

"No sir! No-ah-"

Fly leaned close, playing drill instructor. "Try COR-POR-AL, boy. Next time you open that hole of yours, first word out better be Corporal Taggart."

"C-C-Corporal Taggart, sir! I mean, Corporal Taggart, we're not supposed to leave."

"Did you hear what type of message traffic I said this was?"

"Cla.s.sified? Sir-Corporal!-we're fully cleared for all levels of cla.s.sification."

"Do I know that, boy? You got some paper you can show me?"

"No, not on me."

"Then take a hike, d.i.c.khead. Go back and get something from your C.O. We'll wait right here."The man dithered, looking back and forth at the door, the equipment, and his partner, a small, frail- looking man who pointedly looked away, saying No, way, bud, this is your call. "All right. You won't touch anything while I'm gone, will you?"

"Scout's honor," sneered Fly. Was he ever a Boy Scout? I couldn't remember.

The man slid sideways past Fly and almost backed into me. I glared daggers at him and he split. After a couple of seconds Fly turned to the mousy compan- ion. "What're you still doing here? Get after your partner!"

Meekly, the man turned and darted out of the room.

"Fly, what's going to happen when they get across the street and find out there's no message traffic from the President?"

"Well, we'd better hurry, A.S., so we're done before they get back!"

Fortunately, they'd left the equipment on, because I had no idea how to turn it on. It was some new, ultramodern civilian stuff I'd never seen before. I found a keypad next to a small LED display. At the moment, it showed the frequency for Guard channel, plus another freak above that.

I tapped at the keypad; they hadn't locked it out, thank G.o.d. I typed the freak for North Marine Corps Air Base, office of the SubCincMarsCom, Colonel George Karapetian. It was no great trick remember- ing it; I was the radioman for Major Boyd when we were stationed on Deimos on TDS to the Navy.

I wandered all over the band from one side to the other, looking for the carrier. Finally, I found it; it was weak and intermittent, as if the repeaters were blown and I was picking up the source itself. But I boosted the gain, and we were able to pick out the words from behind the snow.

I engaged the standard CD encrypter, digitally adding the signal to a CD of random noise from background radiation; they had an identical disk at North-if we were lucky, they'd figure out that the signal was scrambled and pull their encryption on- line.

"Corporal Fly Taggart, commanding officer of Fox Company, Fourth Battalion, 223rd Light Drop Divi- sion, to SubCincMarsCom, come in, Colonel Karapetian."

Fly broadcast the message over and over, and I started to get nervous . . . both about the time and about the lack of response. Finally, a voice sputtered into life on the line. I recognized it; it was the colonel himself, not some enlisted puke.

"Fox, connect me to Lieutenant Weems. Fourth Battalion, over."

"Fourth Battalion, Weems is dead; I am in com- mand of Fox."

"Who is this?"

"Corporal Taggart, sir."

"Corporal, give me a full report. Over."

Fly gave the colonel the verbal cook's tour ofeverything that had happened to us in the past few weeks. When he finished, Karapetian was quiet for so long, I thought we'd lost the carrier.

"I understand," he said. "Now where the h.e.l.l are you? Can you get back here, like yesterday?"

"We're at a resistance center in Salt Lake City," Fly said. Suddenly, I got an uneasy feeling in my stomach; should we be spilling this much intel, even to the sub- Commander in Chief of the Mars Command?

"Use rail transport," ordered Karapetian. "Get your b.u.t.ts to Pendleton as fast as you can. We've got to talk face-to-face about this. Got that, Corporal?"

"Aye, sir."

"Good. Then I'll expect you tomorrow at-"

With a loud thunk, the entire system died. All the dials, all the diodes, all the cool flashing lights.

I looked over my shoulder; Albert towered over us, his face set in a mask of concrete. On one side stood our friendly guard from the entrance; on the other was the radio tech Fly had bullied, holding a remote- control power switch in his hands.

I gasped; framed in the light, Albert looked like he had a halo.

"I'm afraid you're going to have to come with me,"

Albert said.

"Where?" I asked.

"To the President. Only he can decide cases of high treason against the Army of G.o.d and Man United."