Love on the Run

by Katharine Kerr

  “Move down the street, two hundred yards away. That’s past the next corner. If you see smoke from the building, run. The bomb squad’s on its way.”

  The white-faced crowd moved, and fast. I lingered behind. I refused to leave until Ari got farther away from that hidden IED. Two men in suits and a young woman in a skirt suit stayed where they were as well. They huddled together, talking in low voices. When I ran a quick SPP, I picked up nothing but fear and outrage. I heard someone say, “The fucking Kingdom again!”

  “Interpol people,” Spivey remarked. “They’re staying to get HQ on the line and keep them informed.”

  “Okay. I’ll stay here, too. You might need my—uh—insights.”

  Spivey nodded and trotted back across the street to confer with the fire and police chiefs. I noticed a black truck, about the size of a delivery van, pulling up in front of the building. Four men got out, dressed in black clothes that appeared to be made of padded Kevlar and wearing plastic helmets with the clear faceplates raised. They began unloading a robotic unit from the back of the truck. I noticed that the unit looked crude, a gangly arm topped by a claw, a lot of machinery and motor at the base—a prototype, maybe. Spivey and the other chiefs came hurrying across the street to get out of their way. Ari, thank Whomever, came with them.

  Squads of firemen moved into position close to the building and began unreeling hoses. Just in case, I thought. Ari walked over and stood next to me. A skinny, middle-aged white man with a shaved head but bushy salt-and-pepper eyebrows joined us. He introduced himself as Agent de Vere. We shook hands. The other two agents kept their distance. They were both speaking into communicators.

  “We’re short-staffed today,” de Vere told us. “Two of our agents are giving evidence in a trial downtown. They left just in time to miss all the excitement, the lucky dogs!”

  I managed to smile. Ari’s eyebrows quirked. I figured he was thinking along the same lines as I was. Had they left because they were lucky or because they—or one of them—had planned this all out in advance?

  “I’m sorry about this, Miss O’Grady,” Ari said. “It appears we picked the wrong day to take your deposition.”

  “The right day is more like it,” de Vere said. “What made you sound the alarm?”

  “The smell.” Ari smiled briefly. “Old-fashioned cordite, some kind of nitrogen fertilizer, and something else I couldn’t quite identify.”

  “I see.” De Vere turned to watch the bomb squad. “Damn good thing you didn’t have a cold!”

  Ari caught my attention and mouthed “your warning.” I nodded to show that I understood he wasn’t taking all the credit. Two of the men from the bomb squad lowered their faceplates and opened the building’s doors. They headed inside and dragged their jerry-built robot platform after them. The remaining two stayed on the sidewalk and worked on what appeared to be tablet computers—I was too far away to be sure. I assumed they were providing some kind of information backup to the men and robot inside.

  I took a couple of deep, gasping breaths. Ari raised a questioning eyebrow.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’m just scared.”

  “With good reason,” Ari said. “De Vere, tell me something. The lifts—was one of them supposedly out of order?”

  “You bet,” de Vere said. “Someone had put a sign up outside our offices. I told the fire chief which elevator it was.” His mouth twisted in a caricature of a smile. “But during the evacuation, I noticed that no one had posted a sign down on the ground floor.”

  “Right,” Ari said. “I’m fairly sure the IED is armed through the call button.”

  In the upper windows of the buildings fluorescent lights shone. All at once they went dark.

  “They’ve cut the power to the entire building,” Ari told me. “That should kill the trigger in the call button. One hopes.”

  Spivey walked over and suggested that we all move down the street. The other agents followed as we walked about halfway down to the corner, but the firemen stayed at their posts. My back brain twitched. I was missing something. I stared at the building and ran every scan I could think of. No one remained inside but the bomb squad. The man with the psychic shield—where was he? On his way downtown to give evidence? Or was he perhaps a religious fanatic from the Kingdom?

  The question revolved around another question: why destroy this particular building? Blowing up a credit union would have had little effect on the Republic’s finances. The security firm appeared to be small and local. That left TWIXT as the primary target unless the goal was some kind of personal revenge on an individual. Unless we were dealing with a madman, killing everyone in the building to get back at one or two people seemed unlikely. The man I’d sensed seemed sane enough, merely frightened and upset for some large reason.

  The firemen had hooked up hoses to hydrants and stood in a ring, ready to move in if necessary. Minutes crawled by. No one spoke. Ari kept looking at his watch. I took the chance to run thorough SPPs on the staff members of the various offices. Everyone seemed decent and dedicated. De Vere and Spivey took turns contacting their headquarters in southern California over their sleek black communicators, or so they said. I assumed that one of them had a link to TWIXT HQ on Terra One

  “The other liaison post’s in L.A.,” Spivey told us. “We’re the only two in the Republic. The CBI’s a bit touchy about Interpol’s presence. That’s the California Bureau of Investigation. Territorial instincts. Protocol and hierarchy, you know.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I certainly do.”

  The firemen closest to the building suddenly cheered. The building doors swung open, and the bomb squad emerged. As one man wheeled out the platform, I could see that the robot’s claws held a cluster of black metal pieces wound with wires. The second officer came out more slowly because he was lugging a wooden box, about two feet on a side. The cheers spread through the neighborhood.

  “The trigger mechanism,” Ari said, “and the first charges. I’m assuming that there’s more material still in the lift, but it’s harmless now. That wooden box would have caught fire when the explosive in the trigger went, you see, and set off its contents. They, in turn—”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I can guess. Like Jericho, the walls come tumbling down.”

  Ari gave me a wry smile and nodded.

  Squads of police moved into the building for a thorough search. The evacuees began straggling back uphill. I assumed that it would take several hours before they’d be allowed inside to shut up the offices and reclaim their purses and jackets and the like. In the confusion I had the chance to give Ari privately some questions that I needed answered. He drifted away to ask them of de Vere and Spivey. I stood at the edge of the crowd and ran some SM: Personnel scans for Ash and the Axeman. Neither of them was close enough for me to pick them up. Ari came back with the answers to my questions.

  “The trial date’s been set for several weeks now. The two agents won’t return here after the trial ends for the day. One of them’s a woman. The other is a bloke named Scott Trotter. I received the impression that neither de Vere nor Spivey care much for Trotter personally, though both assure me that he’s competent enough. He was in his office all morning until it was time to leave for downtown. The woman officer, Lupe Parra y Cruz, was working in her office as well. I heard nothing but praise about her.”

  “Huh,” I said. “So neither of them could have built that bomb in the elevator.”

  “Actually, I don’t see how anyone could have done it. It’s not like the McVeigh case, where he and his confederates packed their IED in a closed van and then drove it up to the Federal Building. You can’t just fill a lift full of explosive material in broad daylight without someone noticing.”

  “So you’d think. Who would have been in charge if Spivey had been killed?”

  “Trotter.” Ari smiled, tigerlike. “Interesting, I thought.”

  “You bet. Very interesting.”

  “Your last question.” Ari dropped his voice and gl
anced around to make sure that no one was eavesdropping. “Yes, they do keep orbs on the premises. In a locked safe.”

  I tried to consider the problem of planting the IED, but the crowd of people around us radiated so much raw emotion—fear, relief, anger, exhaustion, residual terror, downright rage—that the sheer massive output from other people’s minds kept mine addled. I could also feel the Pull, the family overlap, nibbling at my defenses.

  “Ari, I need to get away from here. Where can we go?”

  “Home, I should think. I’ll have to give a detailed report, and there’s the matter of your deposition, but no one will have the time to take those today. Spivey’s already given me leave to go. He’ll contact Spare when they need us to come back.”

  “Oh, joy. I can’t wait.”

  “Well, it’s better than Interchange, isn’t it?”

  “Very true. I’ll take comfort in that.”

  As we hiked back to the overlap area, I stayed on alert. I alternated running scans with allowing my mind to open up to the aura field. Ari kept his right hand close to the Beretta under his jacket. We crossed back into the park, found the path, and made our way uphill through the trees. I had just seen the concrete slab through the obscuring shrubbery when I felt someone watching us. I stopped, and so did Ari.

  “I’ve picked up a spy,” I said.

  Ari turned in a slow circle and studied the area around us while I ran an SM: Danger. I registered no one close by, but distantly I felt a presence out on the aura field. As soon as I focused on it, the presence vanished.

  “All clear,” I said.

  “Good. I don’t see any threat either. Let’s get out of here.”

  We walked out onto the concrete slab. Ari opened my shoulder bag and took out one of the orbs.

  “I’ll throw it onto that stain over there,” he said. “Then we dash into the cloud.”

  “Okay.” I swallowed and took a deep breath. “Should be easy.”

  He grinned at me and tossed the orb. It cracked in a burst of blue-green smoke that billowed in a near-perfect sphere rather than pluming like normal smoke. We raced into it. I expected it to sting my eyes and make me cough, but as soon as our bodies touched the smoke, it disappeared.

  We nearly ran out into the traffic on Shelley Drive before we realized we’d returned to Terra Four. When I looked back downhill through the trees, I saw the familiar view. The gray building, the fire engines, the crowded street had all vanished. Ari let out his breath in a puff of a sigh.

  “Very good,” he said. “A walk in the park.”

  I laughed, he laughed, and he caught me by the shoulders and kissed me. Only then did I realize that he’d been as scared as I was—not about the near-miss bombing, but about throwing the orb.

  “We need to report to Spare14,” Ari said. “Let’s hope we can find a cab.”

  “Out here? Very funny. Ha ha.”

  “I’ll just call one.” Ari started to take his phone out of his shirt pocket.

  “Don’t bother. We could wait for hours. The cabs stay close to downtown and the tourist areas.”

  We left the park and walked a good distance before we reached Bacon Street and the nearest bus line, the 54. Since we had to transfer several times, Ari groused the entire way about waiting for buses, riding buses, and buses that stopped every block or so. Fortunately, we reached Spare14’s office before I strangled Agent-Recruit Nathan and ruined TWIXT’s hopes.

  “Next time,” Ari announced, “we will figure out somewhere to leave the car.”

  “Aunt Eileen’s isn’t all that far from the park. We could take the bus from there.”

  Ari snarled but mercifully said nothing more.

  When we sat down with Spare14 in his office, we learned that messages over the trans-world router had preceded us. Spare14 leaned back in his chair and smiled at both of us impartially.

  “Well done,” he said. “Thank God you were there, in fact. I shudder to think.”

  He didn’t need to tell us what he was shuddering about.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Let me give you my opinion straight out. You were right in your suspicions about that office. I could feel Chaos all around me, and I don’t think it’s only because of the bomb threat.”

  “Very well. Could you zero in on any of the personnel?”

  “I’d trust Spivey with my life. De Vere and the other agents I got a chance to vet are okay. Two agents had left the office just before the attempted bombing, so I didn’t get a chance to vet them. I might have picked up their departure, however. Notice I say ‘might have.’ I could have registered some other pair of sapients. The male has strong talents, and he used them to hide from me.”

  Spare14 made a thoughtful sort of mumbling noise. “Parra y Cruz and Scott Trotter would have been the agents,” he said. “I had quite a long talk with her the day I was there on routine inspection. She struck me as quite a good agent. Reliable and steady, I’d say. Trotter, oddly enough, was home ill that day.”

  “Oddly and conveniently?”

  “Um, yes. I begin to wonder. Since I missed meeting him, I can’t say if he has talents or not. Could you possibly write up your observer’s opinion for me?”

  “Not a problem. I’ll do it tonight.”

  “Thank you, O’Grady. I very much appreciate this.” Spare14 glanced at Ari. “You must have a rather acute sense of smell.”

  “It comes from being Israeli,” Ari said.

  “Quite. I understand.” Spare14 drummed his fingers on his desk while he thought something through. “I hate to do this, but I really do think I have to file that formal report. Just before you arrived, Spivey contacted me. He told me that he thought it was time for some official oversight, as he put it. He said little more than that, though. It wouldn’t have been fair of him to name names at this point. Still, his comment was telling. And now, O’Grady, I have your report.” He sighed and looked away at nothing in particular. “Yes, I’m afraid I really shall have to contact HQ.”

  “I understand that this is a major step,” Ari said.

  “Most definitely. The procedure will take a while to implement. Everything has to be done precisely in the correct way with the proper legal safeguards.”

  “Will everyone in the TWIXT office be put on leave?”

  “Not immediately, no. There are preliminaries to get out of the way first.”

  “I ask,” Ari went on, “because of the Axeman case. I’d like to be assigned to that. I failed to apprehend him. It gripes me. Without a home office, won’t the case be in abeyance?”

  “Not necessarily. You could operate out of Los Angeles.” Spare14 looked my way. “O’Grady, is there a chance that the Axeman and Ash might be linked to the terrorists?”

  “There’s always that chance,” I said. “Scum tends to clump together at the top of the soup pot. I’m fairly certain that Ash is what we call a fast walker. Her talent would be useful when it came to smuggling operatives—” I stopped with my mouth half open. The insight I’d failed to receive in the midst of the terrified crowd on Six finally worked its way to the surface of my mind. “She’d also be able to walk into small spaces so quickly that she’d be hard to see. Like the elevator in the building. Like, carrying explosives. If she couldn’t rig the device herself, she could bring someone with her who could.”

  Spare14 smiled, a grim twitch of his mouth that reminded me of Ari’s tiger smile. “Quite so,” he said. “A suspicion only at this point, but a valid one.”

  “And what about the orbs?” I continued. “We know she obtains orbs by theft. What if she also obtains them from someone with access to that safe in the TWIXT office? Could she have used the orbs to gain access without anyone seeing her?”

  “Not as I understand it. The transport orbs are not that precise, and she’d have to be coming from some other level to use them at all.”

  “Okay. What if Ash and/or the Axeman are buying them for reasons of their own? A TWIXT officer would be in a good position to deal in contra
band orbs.”

  Spare nodded and grabbed a pen. For a few moments he wrote notes on a pad of paper. “Thank you, O’Grady.” He looked up. “Very helpful, very important. Nathan, we really must get that examination out of the way. Once you’re sworn in, you could be sent back to investigate the possible linkage O’Grady has just postulated.”

  “Thank you,” Ari said. “I realize that things are difficult at the moment.”

  Spare14 nodded. Difficult, I thought. What a word for it!

  We left Spare14 to his grim job of whistle-blowing. Luckily, cabs abound in that neighborhood, so I was spared Ari’s grousing on the way home and his driving as well. There’s something about nearly being exploded into microscopic shreds that makes you long for peace and quiet.

  CHAPTER 6

  WE SPENT THE REST of the afternoon writing reports, sending them off to our various agencies, and answering e-mail. After the day we’d had, routine business had its attractions. I was trying to put the morning’s events behind me, and I thought I was doing pretty well. When I finished with TranceWeb, I found e-mail waiting for me on my other account. I saw an unfamiliar address in my queue and started to delete the message. I realized in time, however, that the subject line read “Actually from Shira Flowertree.” First I ran a security check; then I opened it.

  “I’m sorry to tell you that it will be a few days before we can conference,” the message said. “Lev is being difficult about my willingness to be interviewed. He says I should be putting the kibbutz behind me, not wallowing in its memory. We had rather a nasty argument about it over breakfast. I shall have to let him calm down. You may reach me here at this address, which belongs to Barbara, my friend with the conferencing equipment. Shira.”

  I called Ari over to the computer. “Does this look like your mother’s prose?” I said.

  He read the e-mail. “Yes,” he said. “It also sounds like something that idiot Flowertree would do.”