from Earth.
“These people are saying that now we’re cut off from Earth the techni-class has got to demand rights or they’ll be completely powerless when it comes to martial law.”
“There’s something to that.” He laughed bitterly. Now his hands moved of their own violation—squirting gin into a glass. He swallowed it and shuddered. “Praeger’ll want—martial law, want to completely subjugate the technickis because of the state of emergency.””
“You agree with these people?” More reproach than surprise.
He shrugged, took another drink. Laughed. “Riots!” Shaking his head in wonder. “I designed this thing . . . ” He gestured vaguely at the walls, meaning the Colony itself. “And still it’s three days before I know we’re blockaded. And having riots.”
“Dad—Praeger didn’t want you to know.”
They looked at one another, and the implication hung in the air between them. She gave it verbal shape. “I think there’s going to be a coup. I think UNIC wants to take the colony over completely.”
• 06 •
FirStep floated in the sea of space, a city afloat in the void.
And Freezone floated in the Atlantic Ocean, a city afloat in the wash of international cultural confluence.
Freezone was anchored about a hundred miles north of Sidi Ifni, a drowsy city on the coast of Morocco in a warm, gentle current, and in a sector of the sea only rarely troubled by large storms. What storms arose here spent their fury on the maze of concrete wave-baffles Freezone Admin had spent years building up around the artificial island.
Originally, Freezone had been just another offshore drilling project. The massive oil deposit a quarter-mile below the artificial island was still less than a quarter tapped out. The drilling platform was owned in common by the Moroccan government and a Texas-based petroleum and electronics products company. TexMo. The company that bought Disneyland and Disneyworld and Disneyworld II—all three of which had closed in the wake of the CSD: the Computer Storage Depression. Also called the Dissolve Depression.
A group of Arab terrorists—at least, the US State Department claimed that’s who did it—had arranged a well-placed electromagnetic pulse from a hydrogen bomb hidden aboard a routine orbital shuttle. The shuttle was vaporized in the blast, as well as two satellites, one of them manned; but when the CSD hit, no one took time to mourn the dead.
The orbital bomb had almost triggered Armageddon: three Cruise missiles had to be aborted, and fortunately two more were shot down by the Russians before the terrorist cell took credit for the upper atmospheric blast. Most of the bomb’s blast had been directed upward; what came downward, though, was the side effect of its blast: the EMP. An electromagnetic pulse that—just as had been predicted since the 1970s—traveled through thousands of miles of wires and circuitry on the continent below the H-blast. The Defense Department was shielded; the banking system, for the most part, was not. The pulse wiped out ninety-three percent of the newly formed American Banking Credit Adjustment Bureau. ABCAB had handled seventy-six percent of the nation’s buying and credit transferal. Most of what was bought, was bought through ABCAB or ABCAB related companies . . . until the EMP wiped out ABCAB’s memory storage, the pulse overburdening the circuits, melting them, and literally frying the data storage chips. And thereby kicking the crutches out from under the American economy. Millions of bank accounts were “suspended” until records could be restored—causing a run on remaining banks. The insurance companies and the Federal guarantee programs were overwhelmed. They just couldn’t cover the loss.
The States had already been in trouble. The nation had lost its economic initiative in the early twenty-first century: its undereducated, badly trained workers, the outsourcing of jobs and manufacturing made US industry
“These people are saying that now we’re cut off from Earth the techni-class has got to demand rights or they’ll be completely powerless when it comes to martial law.”
“There’s something to that.” He laughed bitterly. Now his hands moved of their own violation—squirting gin into a glass. He swallowed it and shuddered. “Praeger’ll want—martial law, want to completely subjugate the technickis because of the state of emergency.””
“You agree with these people?” More reproach than surprise.
He shrugged, took another drink. Laughed. “Riots!” Shaking his head in wonder. “I designed this thing . . . ” He gestured vaguely at the walls, meaning the Colony itself. “And still it’s three days before I know we’re blockaded. And having riots.”
“Dad—Praeger didn’t want you to know.”
They looked at one another, and the implication hung in the air between them. She gave it verbal shape. “I think there’s going to be a coup. I think UNIC wants to take the colony over completely.”
• 06 •
FirStep floated in the sea of space, a city afloat in the void.
And Freezone floated in the Atlantic Ocean, a city afloat in the wash of international cultural confluence.
Freezone was anchored about a hundred miles north of Sidi Ifni, a drowsy city on the coast of Morocco in a warm, gentle current, and in a sector of the sea only rarely troubled by large storms. What storms arose here spent their fury on the maze of concrete wave-baffles Freezone Admin had spent years building up around the artificial island.
Originally, Freezone had been just another offshore drilling project. The massive oil deposit a quarter-mile below the artificial island was still less than a quarter tapped out. The drilling platform was owned in common by the Moroccan government and a Texas-based petroleum and electronics products company. TexMo. The company that bought Disneyland and Disneyworld and Disneyworld II—all three of which had closed in the wake of the CSD: the Computer Storage Depression. Also called the Dissolve Depression.
A group of Arab terrorists—at least, the US State Department claimed that’s who did it—had arranged a well-placed electromagnetic pulse from a hydrogen bomb hidden aboard a routine orbital shuttle. The shuttle was vaporized in the blast, as well as two satellites, one of them manned; but when the CSD hit, no one took time to mourn the dead.
The orbital bomb had almost triggered Armageddon: three Cruise missiles had to be aborted, and fortunately two more were shot down by the Russians before the terrorist cell took credit for the upper atmospheric blast. Most of the bomb’s blast had been directed upward; what came downward, though, was the side effect of its blast: the EMP. An electromagnetic pulse that—just as had been predicted since the 1970s—traveled through thousands of miles of wires and circuitry on the continent below the H-blast. The Defense Department was shielded; the banking system, for the most part, was not. The pulse wiped out ninety-three percent of the newly formed American Banking Credit Adjustment Bureau. ABCAB had handled seventy-six percent of the nation’s buying and credit transferal. Most of what was bought, was bought through ABCAB or ABCAB related companies . . . until the EMP wiped out ABCAB’s memory storage, the pulse overburdening the circuits, melting them, and literally frying the data storage chips. And thereby kicking the crutches out from under the American economy. Millions of bank accounts were “suspended” until records could be restored—causing a run on remaining banks. The insurance companies and the Federal guarantee programs were overwhelmed. They just couldn’t cover the loss.
The States had already been in trouble. The nation had lost its economic initiative in the early twenty-first century: its undereducated, badly trained workers, the outsourcing of jobs and manufacturing made US industry
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