Polished

by P. S. Power

  Then they talked about making Olga look a very specific way and showed the picture that the man was supposed to work with. Also hitting that they needed to get rid of her first mode. Richard doubted that Timon would forget about that, but they were putting the man on the spot, and clearly intended to judge his work at the end. It was only fair to let him know what was going to be picked apart, if he failed.

  After half an hour of watching the man stand there, behind the chair that Olga was sitting in, with his eyes closed, they all left the room. There was no real reason to be there for five hours of work after all. It didn't look like anything at all. That made for some boring video.

  As soon as they left the room, everyone with them following along, including Charlot and Scott Chambers, as well as the head chef of the cooking show, Mark, Cindy waved for them to follow her outside. Then she simply smiled.

  “This is our working group? Plus a few people from here. Let me make a few calls, before we start.” She did it efficiently. Enough so that not five minutes later, first Willum, then Tor and Dareg came out of the red hut.

  At least, Richard was making an assumption that the last two were those particular men. There was something about them that felt right for it. They didn’t look the part at all, however. For instance, the one that he was nearly certain was Tor Baker looked to be about fifty, had gray hair and a bit of a paunch at his gut. Just enough to look real. His face was manly though, even if he seemed kind of similar to normal in some strange fashion.

  Dareg Canton was tall still, but had transformed into a black man. Lean, like a ball player. Friendly seeming, and dressed in a t-shirt and jeans. Willum had the clothing going on as well even if he still looked like himself, though Tor was in a suit. It made him seem like a mid-level businessman.

  Rich had to smile at it, since they all looked about right to blend into his world. Perfectly, in fact.

  “That’s brilliant. All of you. We should find a place to sit.” They were standing in the front yard of the palace at the moment. Tor owned the thing, so going back inside made a certain amount of sense. Instead the man himself nodded, then pulled a talisman, tapping it to make a small sphere show up in the air.

  Then the thing started growing, until it was big enough for about a hundred people to sit comfortably. It was more of a rectangle then, though rounded at the edges. It seemed old fashioned, while being made of pure magic at the same time. Waving, Tor indicated a door. There was a ramp that appeared, out of nothing, so they wouldn’t have to jump up nearly three feet up to get in.

  “We’ll speak in orbit? High up, anyway. I don’t have shields for you all.” That part seemed to be an oversight on his part. Interestingly, Dareg reached into his shirt and pulled off a large number of small tiles on plain brown strings. Those were passed out to everyone there.

  “Here you all go. These are class four Timon shields. They will allow you to keep air in space, fly around, and that sort of thing. Teleport, if you learn how. Only in space though, so keep that in mind. Do we need anyone else?” He counted, though Richard knew that they were missing someone already.

  Gillian Sprouse.

  Kate smiled at the dark-skinned boy then.

  “Our friend, Gillian? She’s needed for this, I think.”

  That part, finding her, took a bit of effort. Gillian had taken off, heading to Mars, for some reason. Not to hide from them, just because that was the best place to go, if you actually wanted to both survive and earn your way there, in that reality. It was Dareg that found her, by getting in touch with the leader of Mars, personally.

  Hess, the Ysidril.

  His face was familiar to Richard now, even when upside down. He waved to the man, then focused, so that the Ysidril writing would show up on his front. Seeing that had Dareg waving him over as the being, who already had told on Gillian, went on.

  “Ah, Rish! Your friend spoke highly of you when she interviewed to move here. She is in waste management for Third City already. It is, I think, her off period. You are coming to visit?”

  That wasn’t really his plan, though it was a good enough idea, if they could travel there in time. Odds were the people they were fighting didn't have a bunch of spies on Mars, in a different reality, as of yet. Not that he wanted to take chances that way.

  Interestingly, Katie spoke to Tor softly, then borrowed his handheld, and tapped the front of it for a while. After a few moments Gillian’s face came into being, while Dareg was still speaking to Hess about her.

  “Hello? I mean, hala?” The girl sounded cute, though it was clear that she hadn’t used the new language teaching tool yet. Most probably would avoid doing that, if they could. It really wasn’t fun to use, if you had time to do it the normal way.

  Kate smiled at the girl, her face seeming friendly.

  “Gillian? I’m Brie. From the IPB? We wondered if you still feel up to making that video you wanted? That way we can take it back with us, while you stay here.” The words were manipulative, somehow.

  A thing that Gillian didn't seem to pick up.

  “Yes! I’ve been searching my brain as to how to get that done. I kind of figured that I’d go back and just be killed, you know?”

  The thing there was that everyone with them, including the Noram people, really did seem to get the idea. They also understood why keeping her there, well away from danger, was the better plan for the time being.

  Dareg, off the device with High Leader of Mars, Hess, moved in then, to smile at the teen girl. He looked different now, but still good enough to get her to grin back.

  “We can set up there, if that works for you? Hess is having Samantha’s closed, for us to use for this. Do you know where that is?”

  Interestingly, she nodded.

  “In First City? It was the very first place I went here, when I came in. Sam helped me get my footing. I can be there in… Well, as long as it takes for me to find a transport box in English, which might be a while.”

  Rather than have a problem with that, Dareg just nodded.

  “I can come get you? That shouldn’t take long, if we hurry.”

  That got the rather plain and very important, girl to nod back. Then explain where she was on Mars.

  They had to hurry, even with teleportation at play, but were with her, in a very nice-looking restaurant, less than an hour later.

  Chapter eleven

  “Then, when I was eleven, they forced me to kill my baby brother. He was about three months old. I had to… They made me stab him with a knife as they all watched. Then they told me that if I didn’t always do what they said, they’d tell on me and everyone would hate me for being evil. Only… They were going to kill me, if I refused to do it. I nearly hadn’t survived the beating the last time I’d disobeyed.” The words were dark, and the whole conversation seemed off.

  Without truth or validity to it, not because the girl lacked conviction or sincerity in her words. Just due to how hard it was to think of such things being real at all. It was easier, even knowing better, to assume Gillian was making it all up, for attention or possibly thinking she might cash in on her story. Making a thing that no one, in any world, would trust or believe.

  Except that Dareg, for some reason, had placed what he called a truth amulet on the young woman.

  That caused the air around her to glow in white and gold, with two stripes of the second color floating in the air, about two feet from her body. The nimbus of white hung in the air as well, brightly enough that a person could have read by it. If she lied, which did happen at first, if only a few times, the world in front of her seemed to rip open, a rent of blackness in front of her, covering her face and part of her body. The effect was incredible. Stark and dramatic, at the same time.

  It also wouldn’t really matter to anyone watching the whole thing back home. Ma and pa middle America would disbelieve the claims because they simply didn’t have the mental space to cope with the kind of information they were being given. That Senator Strouse and his wife had co
nstantly abused, raped and made their little girl eat human flesh didn’t make sense to good people. Really, it probably couldn’t, even if they were trusting and open minded. Even bad people who had almost no rules at all were going to be left sickened by what was being spoken of on the tape they were getting.

  Richard wasn’t on the thing. None of them were, except the girl being questioned. Of interest, it was Will Baker who came up with most of the questions for her. The longest portion wasn’t even a listing, blow by blow of how the kid had been so badly wronged. It was the list of names that was important to them, after all. One that was linked intimately to the evilest of things, naturally.

  The whole event took hours to get through. Long enough so that Kate stood up, about halfway through a recounting of her childhood and then moved in and patted the plain girl on the back of the hand, gently.

  “That was good. We’ll need more, later. Can we come back and get that, do you think? This will give us enough to start.” She said it as if she knew that was a fact.

  For his part, Richard didn’t know that at all.

  Still, he stood as well, and moved toward the girl. She had tears that were running down her cheeks. A thing that would seem legitimate to those who wanted to support her and manipulative to anyone that wanted the whole thing to be a lie. Even with all of the proof they had, which was a lot, that second group was going to be larger than the first, he had to think.

  Off to the side, Cindy Mableton nodded, making a point of catching his eye. Letting him know that she agreed with his assessment of what would be happening. No one else let on, if they agreed with their ideas, if they did at all.

  Tor, looking short and older than normal by almost thirty years, moved in and patted the girl on the hand several times himself.

  “We’ll make certain this is seen. That should start things in motion, as to removing these people?”

  It was Gillian, the victim of horror, who shook her head.

  “Not really. It was something that we were always told, growing up. All of the kids involved in this kind of thing… No one will believe us at all. If they do, then they’ll be killed or discredited. All I’m doing here is… I don’t know. Trying, I guess. If we are allowed to show this anywhere it will be a first, I think. Normally they’d just make sure I killed myself. It might be hard to get at me here, thanks to you guys.” She looked at all of them, one by one, standing up, her face still moist with tears.

  It was Richard’s turn to reassure her then. He stood and let a soft smile cover his face.

  “This… Look, Gillian… We aren’t putting this out to remove these people, not really. We know that we can’t take them out that way.”

  Several people looked at him then. About half of the ones from the IPB seemed shocked by the news. Denis did, for instance. His face was baffled by the information, even if he kept his mouth shut. Brian Yi wasn’t doing much better that way. Kerry however took a very deep breath and then nodded.

  “I… Understand.”

  The words, stark and a bit bleak, just hung in the air as Dareg Canton looked at her. His dark skin shining a little under the bright lights of Mars. After a few moments, the man took a very deep breath of his own.

  “Assassination?”

  Kerry, who was attractive now, instead of merely cute, having had work done in an attempt to keep the boyfriend that she’d apparently broken up with anyway, looked back at the man, her blue eyes gem like at the moment.

  “There was a thing, about a year ago. Cindy, Penny Cooper and I were sent out to remove some people that wanted to destroy… Everything, I think. The whole world. We killed dozens of them. I know that I wasn’t supposed to think about it, but after we got back, more died, even if we weren’t doing anything. Hundreds of them.”

  Cindy smiled then, and nodded.

  “Nearly a thousand. It took me months to get them all. I can do it again, but this batch is even more high profile than the last one. Similar after a fashion. The thing is, if we just kill them, or most of them, then we end up with them going into hiding and coming back in twenty or thirty years. We have to prove that they’re evil first, then take them out. Gillian is right, though. We can’t just have them voted out. Most people have been trained to think of things like this as a lie. Only death is going to fix this. More of it than I think anyone else understands, yet.”

  The words were incredibly dour. Enough so that Katie actually sighed. Then, instead of telling them about her clever plan to fix things without heading in that direction, she simply… Nodded.

  “Agreed. We need to be ready for that. It’s why we have to name names first thing. Otherwise people will hide what they’ve done and get away with it. Again. I’ve been trying to do this for the better part of forty years. We have proof. Evidence. Even a few taped confessions and victim profiles like Gillian just gave. When we’ve tried to put it out before, it has been stopped, every time. They control the airwaves and the internet too well.”

  That kind of thing wasn’t something that Richard knew a lot about. Television and radio, of course, since those things had been around for a while. He’d even used computers and the internet, in the last months. Still, he was one thing in particular. A singular kind of being that had influenced everything about him for over seventy years. A time that was long enough that, even with new powers and a legit job, he hadn’t truly shaken it.

  He was, at his core, a thief. Perhaps that was why he, out of all of them, could see a potential answer to their problem.

  “Okay, then… If they have control of these things, how do we steal it from them? Can we pirate enough of it, for long enough to get the word out? We might need to do it more than once. How do we manage that?” He was speaking directly to Katie, since she was the woman who knew everything, at least when she was in her own world. There, at the moment she was probably up on everything for that particular reality, instead. The world that held Noram and all its people.

  Still, the woman didn’t seem upset or confused at all. Probably because she’d thought about the idea before, a time or two. It was kind of the obvious one. At one point she’d actually gotten some training to be a thief herself, after all. So while it might not have been her first thought on the matter, it clearly was one that would have come up, inside of the last forty years.

  “No one can do that, of course. The system is too spread out for anyone to do that kind of thing, any longer. Twenty years ago, we might have done it. We’d have to… Oh, take over at least a hundred satellites at the same time, as well as thirteen different data hubs on the ground. We can actually do that part, by physically taking the facilities. Of course, whoever does that will probably be hunted after the fact. Though, you know… The IPB could do it. Take everything all at once like that. All the internet and television stations. It would just start a war, if we tried. We just don’t have the bodies otherwise. Or a real way to get at the space based things. It isn’t like we have, oh, a hundred space ships at hand or anything.”

  The words weren’t actually dire or dark that time. Just bland and blank. For the life of him, Richard couldn’t even hear the manipulation that almost had to be involved in it.

  Thinking about it, he tightened his lips for a moment.

  “Even if we could get enough people and ships… That isn’t enough. We can’t just destroy the satellites. We’d need to take them over, right? Even at that, doing it just gets the word out. That won’t really convince everyone. We can show them things. That doesn’t make anyone look, or believe it. Really, being able to take over, even for a while will make it less likely to be trusted, since anyone able to pull that off might also be able to fake the original video. Plus, we really don’t have the bodies, even if we go with the plan from earlier.” Showing why it was being done, then assassination.

  Interestingly, Dareg Canton took a very deep breath then.

  “I… can help with part of it. Possibly. If my daughters can be brought in to this? We can provide ships, pilots and ground force
s. Ones that, when we are done, can vanish and leave your reality, making them impossible to trace, after the fact. What we cannot do is anything with your technology over there. Can you do that, do you think, Mr. Drake? Stop or steal these satellites of yours, made from technology?” The look was all for him then, as if that made any sense at all.

  For his part of it, he nearly froze, as Lydia nodded her head, hugely.

  “Right… Right! Brie can build what we need that way. Richard can come up with the plans to breach the ground facilities and Brian can take in the people we need. Still, can Eva and Samantha… Will they, help us in this? It isn’t their fight at all. That’s not just a big thing to ask for, it’s close to the biggest thing that could ever be asked. Short of killing all of these people. Cindy, you have that part? Are you okay with that? I… We might find someone else to do it, if you can’t.”

  The blonde woman, looking thin and a bit underfed still, smiled.

  “Can the former serial killer get behind killing a whole lot of really evil people? I think I can, but thanks for asking. It will have to be done in secret. Really…” She made a face then, and looked at Tor, then Willum and Dareg, each in turn. “Darn it. I hate this part. Before you all nod along, I don’t mean the murder bits of it. I mean the part where I just had an idea. One that… Gah. Freaking ideas, right?”

  Willum did nod then, as if he got the idea already.

  It took Richard longer. About ten seconds.

  “Ah… We can put the names out, one by one and announce that they will die if they don’t come forward and confess. That won’t hold up in court, but when they all die…”

  Cindy made a face then.

  “We can get the unnamed ones to come forward. Some of them. Out of fear, but without it being a direct threat. They either come forward and present proof and go off to prison for their crimes or they die. One way or the other they’d be out of power.”

  Kerry snorted a little then.

  “Wait, so your problem for this is really just that you won’t get to kill them all yourself? That’s a bit greedy, isn’t it?”