Colony Ben Bova

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Garrison made an abrupt motion with his left hand and his image vanished.
Leo leaned back in his chair thoughtfully.Gotta check out that lab. Can't let him cut off my supplies.
Raja was standing beside a six-foot-high console covered with gauges and knobs. "The conference is scheduled to
begin in a few minutes." He asked, his voice high-pitched with nervousness, "Will you be ready?"
"Sure, man," Leo said. "I'm ready for anything."
With a relieved sigh, Raja turned back to his equipment and fidgeted with the various controls. Leo knew that most of
what he was doing was sheer tension-caused busy work. But finally he cast an eye on the digital clock, gave a sigh,
and leaned heavily on a single large red button.
Instantly the table was filled with eleven other seated figures, as real and solid as if they were actually in the room,
rather than scattered around eleven different cities hundreds or even thousands of miles apart.
Raja made a nervous little bow and scuttled out of the room, actually moving through the holographic images of two
of the people "sitting" nearest the door. Leo let the others babble while he listened to the door clicking shut and heard
Raja's footsteps receding down the hall stairs.
Then he turned to the others at the table. Four of them were women. Two one man and one woman were white.
They had all been checked on and vouched for, but Leo found himself distrusting the two of them.
"My name is Leo," he said loudly enough to make them stop their chatter and look at him. "And I want to ask you a
question."
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One of the black women asked smilingly, "What question?"
"How many blacks in the U.S.? How many Hispanics, Chicanos, Orientals, and Indians?"
"Lots and lots," somebody said. The others laughed.
COLONY " 175
Leo did not. "Together, we outnumber the white-asses by a ton. How comethey rannin' the country and we're not?"
For a moment, no one spoke. Then a chunky, brown-faced young man said, "The whities got the Army, man. They got
guns. They're organized."
"Right!" Leo snapped. "They'reorganized*. That's their secret. It's about time we got organized, too. Instead of a
dozen different movements in a dozen different cities PRU here, Panthers there, Latinos someplace else we gotta
organize and work together."
"We gotta, huh?" said one of the blacks. "Who says?"
"I say. And I say we can get all the help we want from the PRU and others."
"Big shit."
"You bet it is," Leo said. "What's your name, brother?''
"My name? I ain't givin' you my name. Jus' call me Cleveland."
' 'Okay, Cleveland. How you suppose we got all this fancy communications gear? Just fall out of the sky? We
gotfriends, man powerful friends. What we need is organization, workin' together. We can beat Whitey. It'sour
country; we just gotta take it."
One of the women said, "Most of the Army is black ... or brown."
"Fuckin' National Guard ain't. And they back up the white-ass cops."
"We can get 'em," Leo said. "We can beat 'em if we work together."
T. Hunter Garrison sat in his powerchair and watched the dawning looks of interest and ambition on the faces of the
men and women listening to Leo.
From the windows of his penthouse, high above the smog of coal-burning Houston, he could see all the way to Clear
Lake and to the smudged horizon that showed where Galveston lay.
His craggy face was grinning broadly as he watched the miniature holographic images of the twelve underground
BEN BOVA " 176
leaders. They were no bigger than dolls sitting around a dollhouse table, in the three-dimensional picture that hovered
in midair in front of Garrison's eyes.
"Mean-looking bunch, aren't they?" Garrison said.
"I don't know," said Arlene Lee, standing behind the powerchair. "That one on the end, with the Apache
headband he looks kind of rugged."
She was a tall, lusciously billowing redhead, with the fresh, smiling good looks of a cheerleader. She was variously
Garrison's private secretary, bodyguard, courier, confidante, and hatchet-wielder.
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"Get me another beer," Garrison said, his eyes never leaving the animated discussion that was heating up around
Leo's conference table.
Arlene disappeared behind a row of potted plants for a few minutes. From the outside, Garrison Tower looked like any
other international-style skyscraper in Houston: a few floors taller than all the rest, of course; a much larger expanse of
solar energy panels set along the outside walls that were high enpugh to be above the smog level, and all around the
helicopter pad on the roof. But Garrison's living quarters on the topmost floor of the Tower were a comfortable mixture
of efficiency and ease: walls paneled in real wood, bearskin rugs and animal hides on the 'tiled floors, all the modern
conveniences hidden behind mirrors or cabinet doors.
Arlene brought Garrison his beer and leaned over the back of his chair, twirling the few strands of hair remaining on
his head with one carefully manicured finger. He looked across the room to the mirror facing them and silently admired
her cleavage.
"They're not very bright, are they?" she said.
"What?"
"These kids who call themselves revolutionaries," Arlene said. "They can't think very far. Why haven't they thought
about working together before this?"
Garrison snorted. "Don't learn much about cooperation in the gutter. This big black buck calls himself Leo he's got
more -brains than the rest of 'em put together. He's
COLONY " 177
already got a lot of the New York street gangs working together."
"He looks kinda familiar, doesn't he?"
"Should," Garrison said. "Used to be a major-league football player, over in Dallas."
"How on earth did he ever go from football to being a street fighter?''
Garrison smiled grimly. "Long story. Look it up in the files if you want to. Man of honor, conscience. Wanted to
make-the world better for his fellow niggers. Then he discovered power. It's the worst drug of them all."
Arlene shook her head, letting her long red hair sweep across the old man's bald head. "You oughtta know about that,
honey."
He grinned up at her. "Power's an aphrodisiac, eh?"
With her Texas cheerleader's smile, Arlene replied, "It shore is, honey. It shore is."
Cleveland was grumbling, "So what's all this shit about workin' together? Whaddaya want us t'do, send ya a telegram
every Saturday?"
"No," Leo said in a deep, rumbling purr. "I want us to shake the white-ass power structure to its roots. I want to do
something so powerful, so spectacular, that they'll beglad to give us control of the country, just to get us off their
backs."
"Jesu Christo!Whaddaya mean, man?"
Leo smiled slowly and leaned forward in his groaning chair. "Any of you people ever hear 'bout a military action called
the Tet Offensive?"
it's hot in Texas! The sun just melts you down, it even bakes the ground 'til it's so hard you couldn't grow anything
on it except sagebrush. At least, that's what some of the other students told me.
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I talked with Mom and Dad on the phone tonight to tell them I got here okay. They're moving off the farm next week
and going to the housing project [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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