La Grange updated the duty log, signed off the end-of-shift inventories for safes, keys, documents, codes, and communications checks, and was just pulling on her field jacket when Porter reappeared with the Duty Sergeant and Charge-of-Quarters. She opened the cage door.

“It’s all in the log, Top. I don’t know any more than what Parker’s told me, and if he hasn’t told you by now, make him. As soon as the Civvie checks in, fill him in and ask him to please meet me at the scene. Remember: Civil. Liaison. Officer. Don’t forget the please. The police will be there already, and I’ll need that C-LO to make sure that we find out anything that we care about. And call the main gate. Tell ‘em that we’re coming through.”

The First Sergeant grunted, then grunted toward the pot of bilge sludge stewing in the corner.

“Parker. Coffee. Report.”

Legrange bolted out of the headquarters, dragging her cap onto her head with one hand, zipping her field jacket with the other, and jumped into the shotgun seat of the FLIVR. At the main gate, not a hundred meters away, already backed up past the external buffer strip and around the corner along the main traffic way, the installation rush hour had begun, with civilian employees racing the clock to be at their desks by seven-thirty. This vehicular tidal surge was already spilling into the first waves of regular commuter traffic, pouring past the post and on into the city. In an attempt to minimize the congestion, from seven to eight the installation police designated both lanes at the main gate as inbound-only. Legrange would catch hell for having the gate block traffic to let her out, but so be it. Meandering across post to exit by the back gate would add another quarter-hour delay.

The duty driver didn’t even slow down as he gunned it past the guard. At the checkpoint, Legrange returned his salute on the fly, and shouted “Thanks Conway!” as the FLIVR careened past the second guard, who’d had the good sense to ignore the law and block traffic at the street intersection as well. No doubt Parker’s garbled story was already known to half the MP company by now. Those Maxroy’s Purchase boys were a tight little bunch.

The FLIVR bounced overland, ignoring marked pathways, in a beeline for the crime scene. They covered the distance to the meadow in just under two minutes—urgency or no, Legrange did not want her driver flattening some schoolchild on the way to a SART stop—and halted where the pavement turned into gravel.

Her face went rigid. She glowered across the expanse, teeth gritted in fury. A little blob of banana suits was clustered at the edge of the trees. Fanning back from that, like lines of ant trails, cutting across the fields toward the back gate; toward Moorstown; toward post housing, were the tracks of nearly one hundred-fifty soldiers, obviously released to return to their homes and barracks to prep for the duty day. It was seven-twenty-four. The police had not yet arrived. So much for controlling the crime scene.

Legrange looked back at the two MPs. They were traffic cops, maybe. Housing Patrol officers, at best. And they had not yet been briefed. She sighed.

“OK you two, time to go earn some of those hero’s wings.”

They looked at each other, then responded in unison. “Ma’am?”

“We’re gunna secure a murder scene.”

“Yes SIR, Ma’am.” They bolted from the FLIVR, but the driver was already dozing. He’d been more-or-less awake, at that point, for twenty-six hours. Legrange bellowed, not out of anger: just to get his adrenaline flowing.

“SWANSON!” He jerked.

“Unass that machine!”

He jumped.

“I want YOU, AT parade rest, RIGHT here, right NOW!”

She stabbed with a forefinger at the spot where the concrete ended and the gravel path began. He scrambled to.

“Swanson, listen up! Nobody. I mean NOBODY, brings any vehicle down here unless the police tell them to, you hear me?

“Yes Ma’am!”

“And nobody, but NOBODY, walks across this field, or down this path, EXCEPT the police, you got that?”

“Yes Ma’am.”

“Say it back.”

“I ain’t spozed ta let nobody cross here ‘cept the p’lice, and I ain’t spozed ta let nobody walk down there ‘cept the p’lice.” ‘Police’ had no ‘o’, and rhymed with ‘grease.’

“You got it. And who am I?”

“The D-O, Ma’am.”

“And what does that make me?”

“GOD, Ma’am.”

“And who does God report to?”

“Colonel Slam-Dunk, Ma’am!”

So who’s the only one who can change that order?”

“Only you or the Hoop, Ma’am!”

Colonel Roger A. Hooper, aka Slam-Dunk Hooper, aka The Hoop, was the installation commander. Until he arrived on post, the Duty Officer acted with his authority.

“C’mon, you two,” she grumbled, turning to go, but then stopping abruptly and facing back.

“Swanson!”

“Ma’am!”

“You are NOT authorized to hurt anybody, you hear me?”

“Ma’am?”

“Do not so much as breathe on a civilian. Politely. Tell people politely.”

“Ma’am.” He looked crestfallen. Swanson was still new enough to suffer from the delusion that he was owed a hero’s welcome as part of a post-war occupation army helping to save the New Utahans from themselves and, inexplicably, Outies. When the New Utahans quite naturally, and not always politely, proffered differing views, Swanson still tended to take things personally. His toolkit of social skills being fairly limited in scope, this had the potential to lead to ugly scenes.

“Just say ‘tasol polis’ if they don’t speak Anglic.”

He nodded.

“Say it.”

“Taser p’lice.” It still rhymed with “grease.”

“PO-lis,” she stressed. “It’s PO-lis.”

“Taser p’lice,” he repeated.

She sighed. “Good, Swanson. That’s really good,” and turned down the path, the MPs in tow, as the neeer-nor, neer-nor of the police sirens finally wailed in the distance.

5

Knowledge Management

May my hymns be in everyone's mouth; let the songs about me not pass from memory. So that the fame of my praise ... shall never be forgotten, I have had it written down line by line in the House of the Wisdom in holy heavenly writing, as great works of scholarship. No one shall ever let any of it pass from memory .... It shall not be forgotten, since indestructible heavenly writing has a lasting renown.

—The Electronic Text  Corpus of Sumerian Literature 2.4.2.05, lines 240-248

Saint George, New Utah

Asach and the Lads set off just after dawn, on a jaunt down the Bonneville highway, into the panhandle. They trundled through the old city, into and through the house furnishings market: rolls of flooring stacked against sleeping windows; parking lots lined with velvet-upholstered furniture. Out past Gazelle Springs, where Founder horse burials inhabited limestone caves above the source.

Through the industrial district of Zarkel, choked with smog; lined with vehicle graveyards that escalated from diminutive taxis to rusting tractor rigs, the latter incongruously piled on rooftops. The highway was lined with transporters, teamsters, cart traffic: a free zone with tarp-covered trailer loads of every make and model; then water tankers in line after line.

Their main destination for the day would be the Ezekiel wetlands: prior to Foundation the once-vast marshes were fed by aquifers seeping from beneath the Oquirrh mountains. Now, aquifer pumping had so lowered the water table that exposed peat sloughing off and blew away. Vast tracts of desiccated land outside the marsh were demarcated into lines and squares by piles of basalt stone. Within these censurations sprawled herder encampments, brown wool burlap tents fluttering in the wind, the livestock grazing thin pasturage somewhere out of view. If left ungrazed, the surrounding countryside would have reverted from bare desert to steppic scrub and prairie.