“It’s worse than that. Markus has a professional interest in building resilience. If Táta finds out, Markus may never escape.”
Mama and I carried the iced beers and chilled mugs out to the patio table. We all sat chatting till Táta said, “Well, Yip and her friend probably just came over here to use the secure link to Yazzy, rather than to entertain the old poops.”
Markus and I only got a word or two into the ritual protests before Mama said, “We’re going to bed. You have work you cannot discuss in front of us. Markus, a pleasure to meet you and we hope to see more of you. Yip, please nag Yazzy about spending a little more time on our Thursday morning calls; lately it’s been fine-fine-fine-bye-Mama.”
We descended the winding stone steps between the flowerbeds. Was I imagining that Markus was walking slightly closer? This live-people stuff was confusing. The trail swung around the second guest bedroom and through an open gallery. “This is the office.”
“Aren’t they both retired?”
“From doing work, yes, from taking tax deductions, never. Besides, every so often someone throws Táta a consulting gig about a foundation or a roof, or Mama does an assessment on a disturbed kid.”
I reached under a desk and showed the recessed scanner my hand. The windows blacked; dim lights came on; a screen formed on one wall. “Pepperoni wildebeest,” I said.
“Activating, stand by,” the house replied. There was a soft thud overhead.
“What was that?” Markus asked.
“The balloon going up. A literal balloon, half meter across, inflated with methane so it doesn’t rise too fast, made of flexible grown-circuits. It’s an anonymizing relay for broadband wireless. The narrowbeam on the roof tracks it. Message goes out to it in a one-time encryption, it calls to a drone at some distance and relays through another one-time key. When we finish talking or it gets out of range, a hot-oxygen capsule goes off inside it, and the flame consumes the balloon. One of Yazzy and Dusan’s cooler designs. Anyway, the balloon needs about three minutes to get to altitude.”
We chatted about Humboldt State basketball till the link chime sounded. Yazzy appeared on the screen in a bathrobe. “Hey, Yip, what’s up? Hi, Markus, you guys must be up late.”
“Just had a major question for you, Yazzy. You’re talking through the safe channel at your end too?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Okay. Uh, after I went through the data that NameItCorp supplied, I ran across a brokerage called AtlantiCrossers—”The screen went black.
I checked. The link had cut somewhere between the o and the s in -Crossers, the first recognizable moment when it couldn’t be any other word.
“What now?” Markus asked.
I pointed at the screen. “Launching another balloon; if I can get an encrypted link up there, Yazzy’s got some other pathways to call me. If she can—I’m sure her system tried to call us back automatically as soon as the connection dropped, and that didn’t get through. And now we’re showing no link to an anonymizing balloon. So she might not be able to call back.”
There was a soft thud from the ceiling again. I explained, “Obviously we’re penetrated, any information—”
A low rumbling boom shook the cabin. The link icon on the screen Xed out. We both ran outside. To judge by the few blazing pieces falling into the garden, the opposition had popped our balloon again.
“Another warning shot,” Markus said. “They want us to know that they play rough. It’s some consolation that they’re patient.” With his boot toe, he flicked a scrap out of my parents’ dwarf Eremurus, scraping the goo off on a flagstone. “Sorry about the mess.”
“So, uh, actually, I’m pretty scared.”
Markus nodded. “Remember you’re standing next to your bodyguard.”
“I’m used to threats involving code and people typing at me.” And quiet days sitting with my cats and watching old movies or working in my garden, I thought, uselessly. “You’re the specialist in actual violence. What do you advise?”
“Usually hunkering down. But since it looks like they’re trying to keep you out of contact with your sister, we should get you into contact with her. They’ve shut you off electronically, so it’ll have to be physically. We should go to Prague.”
“My cats—”
“I have a bonded, secure pet sitter, and Louise and Stefvan are cat people too. Louise can pack your two bags and meet us at the airport; she’ll set up a sleeper charter. If we do an in-air change of flight plan, maybe that’ll muddy our track, too, though I doubt it.”
Three hours later we took off from Eugene-Arcata, ostensibly to Las Vegas to meet a London flight to connect to Prague. As soon as we were off the ground, Markus authorized a flight plan change, and we headed for Montreal, where there was a direct flight to Prague. “Here’s hoping that the opposition isn’t monitoring changes of itinerary, and isn’t tracking the plane. The purchase will pop up on the net, of course, and they’ll probably know what flight we’re on before we land, but at least we’ve bought some safe resting and thinking time between now and our arrival,” Markus explained. “Have you flown a charter sleeper before?”
“Nope. I only travel to visit Yazzy and Dusan, every couple years. Or now and then I go see the kind of old born-in-the-twentieth clients who don’t believe I’m real till they stand close enough to smell me. I’d rather never have to go out of my garden.”
“Hunh, well, we’ll have to see if you can find a way to like travel better.”
“I liked seeing Prague. And Yazzy.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask; so you’re Yip because of your initials? But I saw you both around in high school after my family moved here, and she was already Yazzy before she married a guy named Zalodny. How’d that happen?”
“At age seven, she thought my nickname was the coolest thing ever, when I got it. She wanted one just like it. Then she realized she’d be Yap, which is not a good nickname if you don’t like to be teased about liking to talk a lot. So since her middle name is Azalea, she bent the rules a little. I don’t think she picked Dusan solely for his last initial. Not solely.”
I was hoping we were off the travel subject, but then Markus asked, “So it’s not the travel itself you didn’t like?”
“It was more all the hassle of getting there.” Not mentioning how I hated being away from my familiar things was only slightly lying, right?
“Well, these charter sleepers are low-hassle, like a hotel room that just goes wherever you’re going while you sleep. Almost no noise because they’re so slow and because roboplanes aren’t allowed to cruise below FL 420—”
“We’re on a drone?”
“There’s a pilot up in the cockpit, who will probably settle in to sleep as soon as we’re at FL 450. He’s getting paid to nap while he supposedly waits to fly us down in case of a solar flare or cybercrash or some other figment of a Congressman’s imagination. Anyway, it’s quiet and private. I bet you sleep well.” He helped me fold out the couch into a bed, pointed out the sponge-bathing area, and wished me good night.
What if travel was important to Markus? He seemed so adventurous. Had I disappointed him?
Mama was right, I liked this one. And Markus was right, too; in the dead silence, I fell right asleep.
* * *
On the Montreal-Prague morning flight, the truncated day ensured that even arriving about ten in the evening, we were wide awake. My Czech isn’t nearly as good as Yazzy’s, of course, but it was more than passable to get us quickly through customs and car rental. Given what navigating Prague at night is like, we splurged on a self-driver, which worked its way efficiently through the tangle of streets and pulled up in front of Yazzy’s building just before midnight.
At the front desk, the security guard said he’d never heard of Yazzy or Dusan. The building record not only showed they didn’t live there now; it said that they never had. The apartment number I had for her didn’t exist in that building.
“It’s the right buil
ding, I know the number, I know that broken cornice and that repaired crack,” I insisted.
“Of course it’s the right building,” Markus said.
I was too upset to appreciate the automatic support.
Just past 1 p.m. the car was in front of ZIS’s offices, according to the business card I carried. It was a discotheque.
We ran archive searches, first in the car, then in a coffeehouse with free access. In English, Czech, Chinese, Russian, Spanish, German, Swedish and French, ZIS did not exist, and never had.
Markus saw my facial expression and wrapped me up in his arms. “The budget’ll stand a decent hotel,” he said. “We’ll get this figured out in the morning.” I hung on his arm like a bewildered mourner, and we walked out into the street, summoning the rental car.
When it pulled up, four huge men got out.
Markus pushed me back, shouting “Run!” I turned, but strong arms wrapped me. Something pinched the back of my leg.
I heard a loud struggle going on, but I was so sleepy. Before passing out I noticed they had wedged me next to Markus, who was still struggling feebly.
Didn’t they know we weren’t really a couple yet? I wished I could think clearly enough to know why that thought was silly. The tranquilizer must have included a paralytic, because I couldn’t move, plus a euphoric, because I was becoming happier and happier about being abducted. Clearly, they did not intend to kill us right away, and this was a really well-planned kidnapping. So nice to know we were in the hands of professionals!
The part of my mind that knew I was having those thoughts because of the drugs had no more power to make me hug and thank them than my real mind did to call for help or fight. I was along purely as a passenger.
After a while, the van pulled over someplace. A couple of them dragged and rolled us onto the rear seats and belted us in. Another one played back an audio recording of complicated directions to the self-driving computer.
They all got out of the van and shut the door, and the van drove away. Very clever. So good to be in the hands of such professionals.
Could we help the local cops notice that we were tied up in a van with no driver?
Apparently not.
I literally could not move a finger or a toe; my head hung over to the side, and I was probably going to have the mother of all cricks in my neck. My face felt like slack soggy clay on the front of my skull.
Markus could have been a warm sandbag slumped against me. I hoped he wasn’t too badly beat up; probably losing the fight had been rougher than just being grabbed and tranquilized like me.
I couldn’t even open my eyes to read a road sign. Overwhelmed by helplessness, jet lag, and drug-induced indifference, I fell asleep.
* * *
When I woke again, my hands were bound behind my back. I was lying on my side on a reasonably comfortable surface. When I tried slowly opening my eyes, they opened.
Markus was about a meter away, strapped to a cot, his face toward me. Like mine, his hands were bound behind him. I could see the lines holding his pant cuffs down; his ankles were tied together too. I flexed my feet and confirmed we were bound the same way. As soon as I worked the ankles, the bonds tightened; they loosened after a few seconds of lying still. Taking precautions not to activate the smart bonds by squirming very slowly and without much pressure, I got my head into a position where I could confirm that Markus and I were both bound by calves, hips, and torso to our cots.
I tried moving my mouth; it was dry and my tongue felt thick, but I worked my jaw and sucked saliva a little more, and eventually thought I might be able to talk, if Markus ever awoke.
I heard a mix of whining, whirring, and grinding noises behind me. Ignoring the threatening squeeze of the smart bonds, I raised my head as far as I could, turning to look sideways, and saw a printer-assembler powering up in the corner. A piece dropped into its out-hopper. One robot arm picked the piece up and put it on the assembly frame; the machine went on humming and buzzing as it made the next part. Having nothing else to do, I watched as it used two arms to hold the two just-completed pieces together, printed a screw, then used a screwdriver arm to attach those two pieces and set the combined unit in a different position on its frame.
“Not the liveliest entertainment, is it?” Markus asked.
“This isn’t really fair. You can watch without having to do yoga against the straps.”
“I’ll let you know right away if anything exciting happens. Have you tried working the bonds?”
“Yeah, it’s a smart fiber that constricts against your motion. It releases if you don’t move or stretch it for a while.”
“Duh. My hands are getting cold and numb. I’ll try lying still a while. Didn’t think of trying that. Nothing like being outwitted by a ball of twine.”
“What do you think’s going on, Markus?” I didn’t like the helpless, whiny tone in my voice.
“I usually have the privilege of not thinking about that much,” he said. “Mostly I just punch things that are trying to hurt the things that I’m protecting. I have no idea, except that the whole thing feels like we’ve been set up every stage of the way. But what they got by doing it, or even what we’re being set up to do, that’s … I have no idea.”
“That applies even more to me, and it’s really putting the taste of failure in my mouth. Right now anyone who could figure this out would impress me. I see no way anyone is getting any money, any power, anything any normal scheme involves—”
“Oh my god.” Markus almost whispered it; it might have been the first time I’d ever heard him sound frightened. He was staring over my shoulder.
I turned to look at what was happening behind me, too hard and fast. That triggered the smart bindings, which bit painfully into my wrists, ankles, ribs, and hips.
Nevertheless, I stayed twisted around. I could not have looked away.
“It just stood up,” Markus whispered.
All this time, the printer-assembler had gone on about its work, making parts and putting them together into assemblies, then attaching assemblies. What it had built was a roughly spherical body, now standing up on a tripod of long, thin, spindly legs. On top of the body sat a sensor package—lenses, microphones in scoops, or “eyes” and “ears” except that they pointed in all directions and there was no room for a brain between them. Two powerful-looking arms, one long and one short, protruded from the body.
Like a windup crustacean, on the shorter of its two arms, the robot extended a round, manacle-like claw with interlocking fingers. On the longer arm, an obviously sharp cutting wheel was spinning up to speed like an old-fashioned circular saw. It cocked the saw arm back, telescoping it down, to hold the blade at ready next to its body.
The robot walked toward us deliberately, neither rushing nor delaying, with the clear purpose and utter efficiency only a robot has, like a mutilated daddy longlegs with a buzz saw and a claw. It came forward at a slow, comfortable amble, lifting its back leg, swinging it around front and repeating the process, its three metal feet click-ticking across the floor.
Behind me Markus grunted in pain, trying to force off the tightening smart bonds.
The robot loomed above me. A screen on its spherical body became blue, then white, then displayed:
HOLD STILL.
The claw gripped the strap holding my calves to the cot and lifted it. The whirling blade parted it.
STAY STILL. SAY NOTHING.
The robot cut the other straps holding me.
ROLL ON YOUR STOMACH. LIE FLAT ON YOUR FACE.
Gently but efficiently, the robot cut me free.
STRETCH QUIETLY. YOU WILL NEED TO MOVE SOON.
I stretched; everything felt wrong and painful.
By the time the robot had cut Markus free, I was sitting up. Markus rolled onto all fours on his cot and began stretching arms, legs, and spine, like a cat doing speed-yoga.
The robot stepped to the one door, which had no visible handle or button, and turned to show us its scre
en.
NOD TO ACKNOWLEDGE. DO NOT SPEAK.
It waited. I realized, and nodded; Markus did too.
THIS UNIT WILL SELF-DESTRUCT TO OPEN THIS DOOR. It waited till we nodded.
RUN THROUGH THE OPENING AND DOWN THE CORRIDOR. Nod.
THE FOURTH DOOR ON YOUR RIGHT WILL OPEN. Nod.
RUN THROUGH THAT DOOR AND UP THE STOPPED ESCALATOR IN FRONT OF YOU. YOU WILL FIND YOU ARE IN A CLOSED METRO STATION. JUMP THE BARRIERS AND RUN TO STREET LEVEL.
TAKE THIS DEVICE—a piece of black plastic the size and shape of a credit card dropped from it. INSERT IT IN THE NEAREST ATM.
Markus bent to pick it up, nodding emphatically.
ATM WILL EJECT IT. FIND ANOTHER ATM. REPEAT UNTIL ONE OF THEM KEEPS THE CARD. AFTER THAT YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN. REMEMBER THE BLUE CROSS. GOOD LUCK, YOU ILLITERATE PEASANT.
My breath caught; that was Yazzy’s childhood big-sister nickname for me, the one that had always triggered a fight, sentencing to our separate rooms, and sneaking over to see each other.
STAND BACK. COVER YOUR FACE AND EYES. BE READY.
I backed against the wall. The circular saw slashed the door from floor to lintel, then across about a meter up. The robot backed its sphere-body against the intersection of slashes. I tucked my face into my folded arms.
The robot exploded. Loose junk, some burning, sprayed over Markus and me and spattered nastily against the wall. When I looked up, the door lay in pieces down the corridor.
Jumping the broken pieces of door, we ran down the hall. At that fourth door on the right, as we turned, other doors behind us opened, slammed closed, opened again. Something was fighting for control of internal systems.
The escalator was where it was supposed to be, pitch-dark with a too-bright glare of sunlight at the top. I sprinted up it, Markus just behind, into the Metro station.
The signs were in Italian; early afternoon sun poured through glass doors marked USCITA CHIUSO.
The Year's Best Science Fiction - Thirty-Third Annual Collection Page 83
