There were not enough Rovers. That was the first problem. Ern was on the last one, and he didn’t know what he was going to find at the far end.
A week had passed.
Celine had gone with Molly and Hoyle to Central, to roust the resistance network and prep them. Phil had gone North with the returning women’s delegation, then had stayed there, with the women he’d trained in combat, to engineer a jailbreak the likes of which Venus had never seen.
The trick was going to be conducting a jailbreak while preserving the illusion of continuity. Phil was convinced that a carefully deployed combination of seduction and diplomacy would do the job.
Don’t worry, kid. There’s two hundred guards there and some of them like men. Won’t take long to find one.
That plus a rally from the Former population would do the job. Or so Phil said.
Ern wasn’t quite so confident, but Molly and Phil were, and this was much more their wheelhouse than his. His ability to visualize all the complicated moves and counter-moves that Doc and Molly had planned out was only slightly better than his ability to see past the curtains of mist that the rover punched through like gauze.
He just hoped that Molly and Celine didn’t get picked up by CARE before he got there with the strike force. Molly swore they’d be fine, but it wasn’t until they’d left that Doc said something that halfway made sense.
All despots rely on public lies. The people pretend to consent, because they think everyone else around them consents. Once the lies are sufficiently widespread, they are all that sustain the regime. When that happens, it only takes one thing to turn the tide: give people the courage to speak the truth.
It made sense, but he’d been skeptical. He pointed out that Jeryl was a true believer.
Don’t confuse the actions of a frightened man clawing for power and safety with the motivations of the heart. Jeryl wanted to be safe and important. He was tired of being powerless and wanted to feel powerful.
So why didn’t he stick with the revolution, Ern had asked.
If we win, the best he can hope for is to be ordinary. If he climbed into the Council’s favor, he could have his own private empire. I should have seen it.
No. Ern should have seen it. He knew what it was to want to climb that ladder and be special. Be someone people looked up to. But if that was the case, then the whole revolution idea was hopeless.
No. Not hopeless. We’re betting that the private truths are more powerful than the public lies. That, given a chance to be free to speak, people will.
And if what they had to say was ugly?
The truth is always ugly, son. That’s the beauty of it.
But how would they make a new world out of ugly truths?
Every pile of dung is ugly, but it contains everything you need to make life work.
“Twenty minutes till perimeter,” Lin said from the driver’s seat.
“Any signal yet?” Ern asked.
“Nothing I’ve seen. You?”
“No. Nothing.”
“Are we on time?”
“Eh. Looks like we’re an hour and ten early.”
“Hold at the second marker if you don’t see the signal.”
“Roger that.”
Having no access to reliable radios, they’d had to agree on a series of signals before they’d all gone their separate ways. They were looking for a red flare, at a specific hour, lying on the ground near marker 2.
If the signal was there, it meant that two things had already happened.
First, Molly had gotten the local resistance network and the Former population all turned out at once to sit peacefully in School Square and Council Square. That would attract the attention of CARE. When they had CARE engaged, a runner would signal the team from North to march in and cordon off the protest areas from the Council. Once that was done, the flare would be lit out here.
So now all they had to do was sit and wait.
The diesel engine continued to rumble while they sat still. The numerous fans on it kept the engine cool enough to run, even with the air conditioner keeping the temperature bearable inside the cab despite the 43 degree heat outside. They’d all hosed off on the way in, so they traveled without their helmets despite the risk of fouling up their sniffers. They needed to be as cool as possible before stepping outside—once they got out there, they’d cook fast, and they had to get all the way to the Council before they cooked. Once they got inside with some of the commandos from North, they’d close in on CARE from the rear, announcing the coup was complete and disarming them as they went.
Remember, Ern, any CARE officer who surrenders must receive total amnesty. No popular revenge. No humiliation, no staking, no beration. If we cross that bridge, things will spiral out of hand. This is a legitimate change of government, it is not treason. Don’t do anything that might let them cast it that way.
“Ern? There.”
Ern crouched down and peered through the mist. There was a flickering a little ways ahead—maybe twenty or thirty meters.
“That’s it. Take us in.”