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What do you want me to do?”
The decision took only split seconds. “Sure,” he answered offhandedly.
“Ms. Powers?”
“When do we leave?”
Elliot smiled at her and took her hand.
“Get a quick bite to eat,” said Guerdon. “We’ll be out of here the next hour.”
In a private moment in the anteroom, while Chin and Guerdon were still conferring, Elliot asked Lorimer why she had volunteered. “Three reasons,” she explained. “One. If I decide to make a career with the Cadre, this will look good on my application. Two. I can’t think of anything that would make my father burn more. And three. I’m going along to make certain you don’t get your ass shot off.”
The commissary was not completely finished, but the kitchen was operational. While there were no allies other than Elliot and Lorimer in Auld Lang Syne, work crews and Cadre had almost filled the dining area. But at the moment they were not there only for the food.
Almost everyone in Auld Lang Syne at the time, approaching a hundred people—some with dinners, some without—was seated facing six temporary wallscreens.
The first screen displayed a computer-generated map of the United States, with almost ten thousand dotted red lights on it, clustering around densely populated areas but covering almost every human habitation in the country. Each dot represented a radio or television station. The other five wallscreens were each carrying the signal of a major American network—television broadcasts (subject to censorship) of normal prime-time programming. Highest rated of the five programs, sandwiched in between a serial drama and a situation comedy, was We, the Jury, a program combin- Alongside Night 207
ing elements of an actual court trial, a game show, and an actual execution. (The rumors that producers had signed convicts willing to be executed for spinoffs were almost completely untrue.)
The commissary was humming with whispered conversations and a sense of rising expectancy as Chin led Elliot and Lorimer in. “What’s going on?” Lorimer asked Chin.
“You’ll see in a few minutes.”
The three were near the end of the food line when a huge cheer went up in the chamber. Dozens of red lights on the electronic map had suddenly turned green, the lights changing like dominoes falling into each other, or as if the map was following the progress of an accelerated hurricane dancing across the country. Within a minute, there was not a single red light on the screen.
A second cheer went up as one of the wallscreens interrupted its broadcast—a symphony concert—with a notice reading: “MBS SPECIAL NEWS BULLETIN.”
News? thought Elliot. But no news was being permitted …
A man near the screens turned up the accompanying sound,
“—rupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you a special news bulletin. Reporting to you from our Mutual News Headquarters in New York is Phyllis Breskin.”
A middle-aged but still-handsome newswoman appeared on the screen. “Good evening,” she said in the industry’s standard Oxonian tones. “Since early this morning, MBS News has been off the air in accordance with the official procedures of the Emergency Broadcast System. Our network, however, was instructed not to broadcast an Emergency Action Notification.
“A few moments ago, our Broadcast Command Center in New York received an official release allowing us to resume our normal news operations. We therefore bring you this special update …”
Several of the other wallscreens were now carrying the news 208
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bulletins of other networks.
A newsman on the Pacifica System was saying, “…morning at its trading session in Paris, the EUCOMTO announced that, in a closed session Saturday evening, it was voted to stop accepting the American New Dollar in exchange for eurofrancs. In making the announcement, Chancellor Deak stated that this had been necessary to protect European consumers from the effects of American political instability. He used, as an example, last Thursday’s New York demonstration by Citizens for a Free Society that ended in a riot.”
Elliot, in progress with his food tray to a table, barely managed to avoid spilling minestrone as he heard the results of the riot he had accidentally started. A history lesson from his junior year flashed through his mind, as he remembered the young Gavrilo Princip who, by the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his consort, started the chain of events that had led to the First World War.
Another network newsman: “…prompt move to prevent this news from reaching the American public, where it was feared an immediate monetary collapse would trigger financial chaos, at 4:10 A.M. E.T., the President of the United States declared a state of national emergency, ordering all mass communications media to cease …”