Horseplay

by Cam Daly

  “It’s okay. We’re okay. Sort of. We’re in Dallas. I don’t know where your body is-“

  “Why are we in Dallas? Did Shadow send you there? She shouldn't have done that. You have no training, no idea what to do-”

  “She didn’t send me anywhere. The cab driver kicked me out at the rental car terminal. I figured I should get out of California, and remembered you talking about Dallas, so I figured I would help you get to where you needed to be.”

  “That was a stupid risk. The Craven and Molu are both going to be looking for you. It’s a miracle they didn’t catch you already. But…damn. I can’t believe that Ormlan got away from me like that. I gave them too much time. If only I had a chance to put my mask on…”

  From her perspective the battle had just taken place a minute ago. The harness power was so limited that Kery could only think as fast as he could.

  “You can’t blame yourself.”

  “Yes, I can. But let’s focus on what we do know. Somehow Ormlan found out I was meeting you at the airport. He had a familycraft modified to look like you except he didn’t know about your heart murmur.”

  “My what?”

  “It’s not serious. Don’t worry.”

  “Were you planning to tell me about it?”

  “Eventually. Anyway, somehow he finds out that I’m meeting you. So Farley uses his Homeland Security authority to summon a human helicopter because we would suspect an ESWAT vehicle. Then they took the Farley and Connor-disguised familycraft, dispatched the Deep Thinker from Alcatraz and just barely got there in time to intercept you.”

  “So, wait. Farley and Ormlan are the same?”

  “Ormlan is a name they made up for this mission to Earth. The team of Molu is probably between 15 and 50 individuals, with different skills and roles. It’s actually a family. That’s how they operate. For various missions they'd send groups out in whichever familycraft they need, five or ten in each.”

  “Farley admitted that he…they…were young. Oh, hey. He also called you my ‘girlfriend’ at one point.”

  “Your what?”

  “Umm. Girlfriend. You know, like when-“

  “I know what it means. That’s curiously specific. Unless…”

  His brain idled while he waited for her to continue. “Ormlan, roam, moan. Morla.” He paused. “You know what? I just realized that if you rearrange ‘Ormlan’ you get ‘normal’.”

  There was no response.

  “Kery?”

  Still nothing. He checked the volume level of the phone.

  “Still there?”

  Finally she replied in a mutter. “Yes. Just…Ahh. Just appreciating the Molu sense of humor.” It didn’t sound like she really appreciated it. More like she wanted to strangle someone. “Once I get into the Horseplay body, I’m going to change a few settings in the translation and linguistic systems. I can’t believe we didn’t catch that.”

  He paused for a moment. “And…do you think that ‘Farley’ is a play on ‘fairly’? Like he’s ‘fairly normal’?”

  More quiet. Then, “Agh. Oh. Yes, I do think that. Luckily you won’t be listening when I tell Shadow about that. She’s going to feel like such an idiot.”

  Connor suspected that Kery felt less bad, knowing that someone else hadn’t made the connection either.

  “I’m really glad you’re okay. I was afraid for a while there that I had lost you. Seeing you get-“

  “Connor - look at the power indicator.” He glanced over. The harness had been charging for over an hour from a wall socket, but Keryapt’s head had already drained almost half of the power. “You only have a few minutes to tell me what exactly happened after I lost the Interloper, where we are and whether there has been any news of unusual events or disasters on Earth or in space nearby. Go.”

  He grew up in New York City. He was good at talking quickly.

  #

  An hour later, Connor had a belly full of delivery barbecue and the communications harness was charged again. It had been hard to force himself to wait until the battery was full, but Kery had told him that it took a few seconds to get oriented each time so it would be better to wait and do a session of a few minutes rather than a bunch of short awakenings.

  It was very weird that their roles were now nearly completely reversed. Before, she had been able to think about and understand events much more quickly than he could. She was fast and he was slow. Now he had to wait a painfully long amount of time between conversations. He raised the phone and pressed the button on it that remotely controlled the harness.

  “You’re on again. Are you awake?” He was intensely afraid that something might have happened when she powered off then on again. He once had a dishwasher that came on one time then never worked again.

  “Umm. Yes. There’s a weird moment of disconnect, like the lights flickering and I forget what I’m thinking, but it isn’t like going to sleep. Thankfully, there is enough processing capability co-located in my head so that I can still speak your language. And tell what time it is. But not much more than that. Crap! I don’t have the advisor system.”

  “Advisor?”

  “Yeah, something that Ruut made for me. Just when it was starting to give good advice, too. Anyway, that phone will act as my eyes and ears until I get Horseplay.”

  He felt a wave of relief at the mention of her new body. “Right. So, to continue from earlier, I brought you here so that when Horseplay comes you can get right into action. Farley definitely said something would happen ‘tomorrow’, and it is already late, so there isn’t a lot of time. If you can tell me where to bring you-“

  “Connor…”

  “Hold on. I was thinking that-“

  “Connor.”

  “-I could scout-“

  “Connor!”

  “-the…what?”

  “Horseplay isn’t coming that soon.”

  “Huh?”

  “Horseplay. It isn’t coming tomorrow. There was additional hardware to make, based on the encounter with the Deep Thinker. Shadow dumped a lot of data on me in the few seconds before it cut off my head. I need more winglets, in case I face more than one Thinker at a time.”

  He had been pacing, but her revelation struck him like a blow. He sagged back into the chair. “It isn’t coming? Until when?”

  “At least an extra day. It’s great that you got me here, but we should drive a few hours farther away and find a secluded place-”

  “You have to get it finished early. We need it tomorrow.”

  “Connor, I’m sorry, but I couldn’t even if I wanted to. The Horseplay body itself is ready, but the Observatory was handling communications for everything in the inner system, and it’s gone now. The Factory is running on automatic. It will deorbit Horseplay on schedule and I’ll take it from there.”

  “No. No, there has to be a way. You said the body’s ready. We can’t wait for more whatevers to be made. When all your systems went crazy, your people were still able to find a way to talk to you. Can’t you use that again?”

  “Stopgap? It has a tanglecomm connection to the Factory, but not a direct laser connection. The Factory’s orbit is too low.”

  “So how do we use that.”

  “Huh? The tanglecomm connection? We can’t. The decoherence field is blocking it. If the field was down, it would be easy. If it was even reduced enough, I could sacrifice Hawk’s power reserve and get one high altitude laser squirt off to Stopgap, which could then tell the Factory to send Horseplay.” She went quiet.

  He wasn’t used to her actually stopping to think, but he waited for her to announce a solution to the problem. She would think of another way.

  “There’s no other way. The Factory could build something to give itself whatever sensors it needs, but it doesn’t have any orders to do so. It’s just a construction machine.”

  “Why can’t Hawk laser it?”

  “We didn’t design things that way! Nobody ever thought tanglecomms could be jammed. The Factory and the Obser
vatory are a matched pair.”

  “But-“

  “Just stop! I don’t have any other ideas. Everyone thinks that I’m this great Active, and have all the answers. I don’t, okay? I’m not Keryapt Zess. She’s gone, and isn’t coming back.”

  “You’re not…”

  “No, not literally. Or, actually, yes, I am literally Keryapt Zess. But something happened to me. I don’t have clear memories of who I was back then or how I did what I did. They won’t let me explain it more clearly than that.”

  “Explain…I don’t understand. You just said that we are totally cut off. Who is stopping you?”

  A moment of quiet.

  “Kery?”

  “You’re right. I could tell you. They don’t even know where I am. Hell, they were going to let me die. Again! I don’t owe the Admiralty anything.”

  “Again?”

  “Back when I…damn! I don’t have enough power to tell you the whole story now. The very short version is that this isn’t the first time I’ve been decapitated.”

  “That’s…really messed up.”

  Her voice was almost jubilant. “I know! And I’ll tell you the rest, soon. I really want to. I’m going to tell Shadow, too. She needs to know. You have no idea how much I want to tell everyone everything and stop feeling like this impostor, pretending to be Keryapt Zess. But for now we need to get out of here, to someplace we can wait for Horseplay.”

  This was going to be hard. She sounded so happy about the decision she had made, to tell him about whatever it was. But that wasn’t important to him right now.

  “Kery, I can’t.”

  “Can’t what?”

  “Just…run away. Farley said it was happening ‘tomorrow’ and there isn’t anything I can do by myself to stop it. I’ve seen what you all can do. If I go to the police or someone, they will either turn me over to Ormlan or just get themselves killed.”

  “Connor…”

  “You’ve said there is one way for us to send a message. So that means I have to stop the decoherence field.” He rose back to his feet. “We’re here in Dallas because you know where the field is coming from. So I cut the power to it. Then Hawk tells Stopgap to tell the Factory to drop Horseplay and we’re off to the races. You save the day.”

  “Cut the power to it? Hmm. Maybe. We’re nearly certain it is being generated at a Veryan Systems Engineering facility south of here, formerly known as the SSC. The Superconducting Super Collider.”

  He started to search for the SSC on the Sneaker phone, but she was already bringing up information about it. “The Observatory has been monitoring it as a target of interest. A lot of random vehicles have been parking there but not leaving over the past few days, which sounds like new Tumorish converts arriving. Plus VSE has moved some large equipment there on trucks. That means each side has substantial forces there. It would be…”

  He had been looking at the information she presented, but looked at her head when she trailed off. She still had power. “Would be what?”

  “It would be the perfect target for us. That’s Ormlan’s plan, he practically admitted it to me. He’s going to put Mezerello’s brain in my Interloper body. He’s probably working on that right now. Then tomorrow he has her attack the SSC. She kills everyone there, with the Craven witnessing it all from afar. Except Ormlan already moved the key personnel away before she got there, because…the decoherence field isn’t the whole trick. As good as it is, there’s something more. And he wants to keep it to himself. He’s going to blow the entire base, or have Mez do it, to cover his tracks.”

  “What happens after that?”

  “Best case, the Craven believe it was a Fleet attack but that I died in the blast. The Molu get a crazy powerful new toy.”

  “Worst case?”

  “Something goes wrong and the Craven don’t believe it, and figure out the Molu are trying to hide something. They unleash the Tumorish on your world to make sure you don’t have any more bright ideas like the decoherence field. Ever.”

  “One outcome is very bad for you, the other is very bad for us.” He stared at the overhead view of the SSC facility on his phone. “So there will be Tumorish, and Knights. And the mysterious Craven boss, maybe?”

  “No, he is somewhere else, I’m sure of that. But some of his more powerful forces will be there. Damn, Ormlan’s good. He gets to take them out as well.”

  Connor scrolled around the satellite imagery. “I don’t see power lines anywhere.”

  “Neither do I. And there’s no way that you can blow up the nearest power plant by yourself. Besides, they probably have backup power. If they have been generating antimatter in there, which is highly likely, they might be able to run the decoherence field generator off that. Mez will be running into a death trap.”

  “Can you contact the Craven somehow? Warn him?”

  “We don’t have a direct connection. And if we try to draw attention to ourselves then Ormlan will have Homeland Security on us in a heartbeat.”

  He bit back a complaint that she wasn’t helping. He was so used to her being better than him - stronger, faster, more aware - that having her be even more constrained was hard to get used to.

  After another moment’s pause, he took a deep breath. “That leaves us with only one option.”

  “Unfortunately, I agree. Hope that we are wrong, head north and wait for Horseplay.”

  “No. Shut it down from inside, before Mez gets there.”

  “WHAT? That’s insane. Totally insane. You can’t get in.”

  “I think I have an idea.”

  “What, show up with a pizza for Mister S. Collider?”

  Her disdain hurt him more than he would have like to admit. “No. Show up as a new convert.”

  He braced himself for her to mock him again. She was quiet just long enough for him to check the power indicator. The harness was almost empty again.

  “Huh? You’re going to…wait, what?”

  “Yes. Pose as one of them. And I’m probably going to need your help in there. I could carry you in.”

  There was no translation for what she said next. It was just a blast of noise, like a wail. He was stunned for a moment.

  “No. No no no no no no. No! You can’t make me. I won’t go in there, not like this. Not again. Never again.”

  “Kery…”

  “No, Connor, just no.” She sounded practically hysterical.

  “Come on, Kery. I need you.”

  “I don’t care. I’m not going.”

  “It isn’t like you can stop me. You’re just a head.”

  As soon as he said it, he felt terrible.

  Then her power ran out.

  #

  The lights of the Planning Stage came back on. Someone, probably her, had inscribed a message in giant letters on the forward wall. YOU ARE EXPERIENCING PERIODIC POWER LOSSES. CONNOR SAVED YOU. TRUST HIM.

  She had written that after the previous awakening, when panic had set in. She checked the mission clock - an hour had passed in the real world. She activated the connection to the Sneaker as she tried to remember what had just been happening during her second awakening.

  He had just said…

  “Kery! Oh my god, I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I said that. I am so sorry.”

  The rising panic and fear all came rushing back. He had threatened to force her to come with him. To make her a puppet, just like she had been so many years ago.

  “Please forgive me, Kery. I just felt so desperate…I can’t explain it. I’ve been sitting here for an hour, feeling like shit. That was a terrible thing to say.”

  He didn’t really have a clue why it was so terrible. He felt this bad without knowing the whole truth about the great Keryapt Zess.

  “Kery - are you there? Can you say something?”

  “Connor. I…”

  This was a revelation. How long had it been since someone cared this much about how she felt, even without having known who she was before or how she had become this way
?

  He was waiting for a response. If it had been more than a few seconds for her since he threatened to take her against her will, she might have built up enough anger to really hate him now. But from her perspective, he had almost instantly known that what he said was wrong. She felt emotionally disconnected, trying to decide if she should let herself be angry at him.

  The realization that she was thinking about it that way, as a decision to be made, deflated her anger.

  “…I’ve been through a lot. Some things that you wouldn’t understand, at least not easily.”

  “Kery, I-“

  “Let me finish. The things that happened to me, they affect who I am. I try to overcome my past, but I don’t always succeed. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  She believed him. In a lot of ways it was unfair for her to know so much more about him than he knew about her. “Good. Now you have to promise me something.”

  “Anything.”

  “If something happens, and they are going to capture us, you have to promise to destroy my cranial pod.”

  “What? Are you coming with me?”

  She was almost as surprised as he was. That wasn’t what she planned to say. “Yes. You’ll die if you don’t have me there.”

  “O…okay. But, what if I think there is a chance we might be captured, but I’m not sure?”

  “Well, only if you are really sure.”

  “How sure? And how can I actually destroy your…pod? It seems pretty tough.”

  She snorted in exasperation. “We can figure out those details later. There are some other steps we need to take sooner if this is going to have any chance of working.”

  “If you say so.” She could see from the Sneaker phone’s camera that he looked relieved.

  He still needed a little punishment for threatening to take her head without her permission, but it could wait. Maybe at some point she could dangle him over a cliff so that he could see how it felt.

  She smiled to herself at that. It seemed fair.

  #

  It turned out that in Texas it was easier to buy a gun from a 24 hour pawn shop than get help in a hardware store. After a routine background check on his fake identity’s Texas drivers license, he had a shotgun, pistol, spare magazines and more than enough ammunition.