Amortals

by Matt Forbeck

  We've come a long way in the last two hundred years.

  Moore's Law might have petered out back about the time I lost my first life, but you wouldn't know that from the way Homeland Security worked. TIE had the most incredible supercomputers in the world working for it every instant of every day. It was a bit over my head, but supposedly they just kept adding supercomputers in parallel with each other every time they needed to add more capacity. So far, it seemed to have worked.

  I had TIE pull up Five's record and then search every security camera in Alexandria for footage of him leaving his home. It came up with nothing. Facial recognition came up blank. Gait recognition came up blank. Olfactory sensors failed to find his scent. As far as TIE was concerned, Five was still sitting at home.

  Of course, there are ways to get around TIE, but they require conscious effort. You can wear a mask or a hat to obscure your face. You can defeat gait detection just by putting some gravel in one of your shoes. You can spray yourself with perfume or step in something conveniently found on most sidewalks in the city to cover your scent. You trade for things you want instead of using money.

  "Aw, Five," I said to myself, "what have you gotten yourself into?" The fact that Five was actively hiding from TIE made me even more nervous for him.

  Just because he had gone under deep cover at the moment, though, didn't mean he always had. I had TIE bring up all of Five's recorded movements over the past six months and search for patterns.

  From the analysis, Five was a creature of strong habits. He spent most of his time either at home or at work. Despite the fact he'd graduated with a degree in biology, he had worked for a private company called Failsafe Security as a security consultant for over twenty years, which likely explained how he skilled he was at evading TIE when he wanted to.

  He couldn't keep that up forever though, not if he wanted to be a part of civilization, which is why TIE had any trail on him at all. He seemed to have few if any hobbies or pursuits. He commuted from his home to the office and back, and he regularly went to church and back. Just as Six had said, Five attended the National Cathedral. I wondered about that, as there were plenty of other churches located closer to their place in Alexandria. Christ Church, which had been there before the founding of America, was only a stone's throw from their home.

  Maybe Five was a fan of architecture. I'd been to the National Cathedral many times, and you can't find a better example of Neo-Gothic architecture in the country. Walking into it gives you the sense of awe that a smaller church just can't hope to match.

  I had TIE overlay Six's movements atop Five's. The two of them overlapped mostly at home, but rarely anywhere else. I removed Six's layer and added Lexa Dooley's instead. Five's wife moved around a lot more than her husband and was clearly not concerned about anyone following her. She also attended church with him, nearly every Sunday. There was something about that fact that stuck out at me. I checked the frequency of Five's trips to the church versus Lexa's. He ended up there two or three times as often as her.

  According to TIE, Five's visits to the cathedral happened at irregular days and times. It looked as if someone was deliberately trying to avoid creating a pattern of visits, which didn't make much sense if Five had lawful reasons for being there. If he was a church deacon – or whatever the Episcopalians called the laypeople who gave their reverends a hand – then he should have attended regular meetings there, not ones randomly scattered about the calendar.

  Of course, these were only the visits I knew about. Five could clearly avoid TIE when he wanted to. Or could he? The cathedral was a national monument. It might be too challenging to move in or out of it unseen.

  Then I realized what Five was doing: establishing a pattern of movement. If TIE saw him coming and going from the National Cathedral on a random but regular basis, then it wouldn't raise any alarms if he went there at any other time he wanted to as well – like when he really needed to be there.

  I signaled the Blair House staff to get my hovercar ready. Then I left for the National Cathedral to see if I could find a missing man hiding at his favorite spot.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  It was mid-afternoon by the time I reached the National Cathedral. Unlike much of the city, it stood open to the sun. Congress had long ago named it a national landmark and had forbidden developers from encroaching too closely upon it.

  I came up Massachusetts Avenue, skirted around St Alban's School, and parked the hovercar on an uncovered section of Wisconsin. As I was about to get out of the car, Patrón pinged me. I'd blown him off for most of the day while I puzzled over my murder case and the troubles with Five, wondering how the two might intersect.

  While Patrón was technically my superior, nobody on the planet had seniority over me. Perhaps I abused that privilege too often, but I considered it my prerogative to be able to ignore my boss when I felt I needed to. This time, though, Patrón had figured out I was in the hovercar, and he pinged that instead. Being from the Secret Service pool, the hovercar instantly recognized Patrón's authority and patched the call into its audio system.

  I could have run from the car if I'd liked, but that seemed to be pushing it too far. I figured I'd take my lumps from Patrón now rather than later if he was that determined to reach me.

  "Dooley!" he said. "I've been trying to reach you all day. Is something wrong with your nanoserver?"

  "It's working fine," I said struggling to keep my tone even. "What do you need?"

  "I'd like an update about your murder investigation, up to and including what the hell happened to you last night. In detail."

  "It'll be in my report."

  "I am not going to wait for you to go back and fill in the blanks when this is all over. This is an important investigation, and I have people of every rank in the government breathing down my neck over it. Spill it, Dooley."

  I grunted at him. "I'm in the middle of the investigation right now. I don't have the time to sit down and route all the relevant data to you."

  "Dooley–" He raised his voice the way a mother does before chastising a recalcitrant child.

  I cut him off. "Look, Patrón," I said, "do you want me wasting time telling you how I'm going to catch my killer, or would you rather I do my job and actually catch him?"

  "So you think it's a man?"

  "Think what you like," I said. "I'm very twentieth-century. I still use 'him' as a generic."

  "Damn it, Dooley, toss me a bone here. Give me something to bring back to the President."

  I had been about to stand up and shut the door on the hovercar. I stopped and blinked at that. "What does she care about this? Doesn't she have bigger things to worry about?"

  "Maybe she has a crush on you."

  "Not cute," I said. "What's going on here?"

  Patrón snorted. "For a man as old as you are, I'm still shocked sometimes by how naive you can be, especially when it comes to yourself."

  "Speak English. Or Spanish. Or Mandarin. Or Hindi. Something that makes sense."

  Patrón hesitated while he composed his thoughts. I recognized this from countless conversations with him over the years, and I patiently waited for him to be ready. When he finally spoke, it was with the tone of a primary school teacher trying to explain how to plot suborbital flight plans to a nine-year-old.

  "Do you realize who you are?"

  "Back at the Amortals Project, they told me I was Ronan Dooley when I woke up there."

  "No. I mean, do you recognize your place in the world?"

  I knew where he was going with this, but I wanted to make him follow through with it. "I'm a Secret Service agent, and I'm trying to do my job, but my boss keeps pestering me to chat with him like a teenage girl."

  "You're the world's oldest man. You're the original amortal. You're the model for the rest of us, the hero who started it all. When someone murders you – not just murders but desecrates you – it scares the rest of us."

  "Oh, come on. None of you were killed. And if you were, so wh
at? You'll just come back again tomorrow."

  "I didn't say it was logical, Dooley, but emotions rarely are. The fact remains that the most powerful people in the nation – hell, in the world – are now scared. They want action. Results. And I need to give it to them."

  "You?" I didn't like the direction he'd turned with this. "What about me? I'm the man on the job."

  "For now." Patrón paused a moment to let that sink in. "I gave you this case as a courtesy, because of your long service with the Service and because of our nearly-as-long friendship. I had to override a lot of objections to make that happen, and after a few days with no results, their voices are growing louder."

  "You call having the Kalis blow up my condo, then kidnap me after shooting my partner, 'no results'? I think you're using a different dictionary than I am."

  "You know damn well what I mean. These people, including the President, want your killer's head on a silver platter."

  "And if you don't get his, you're going to have to settle for mine." I didn't bother trying to keep the bitterness from my voice.

  This was the reason I'd never aspired to be director of the Secret Service. I'd been offered the position more than once, but the top job isn't about running the Service as much as it's about dealing with politics. I knew enough about myself to know that I had no stomach for such things. I'd have been forced to resign within my first month, and since my amortality is attached to my job, I wasn't keen to risk that.

  "Of course not," Patrón said. "This is exactly what I mean. You're all but untouchable, and you don't even know it."

  "But now I do. Thanks."

  "Dooley." Patrón's voice sounded at least as weary as I guessed him to be. "All I'm saying is that if you can't find your killer soon, then I'm going to have to assign you some help."

  "Isn't that what Querer's for?"

  "In case you hadn't noticed, that's not going too well."

  I'd had too much of this. I needed to walk. I got out of the car and closed the door behind me. The hovercar pinged me for permission to transfer the conversation to my nanoserver, and I reluctantly agreed. I needed to thrash this out with Patrón, or he would wind up thrashing me.

  "If you don't have results by tomorrow, I'm going to have to send in the big guns."

  I shivered at that. "No," I said. "You wouldn't. That's a PR nightmare."

  The "big guns," as Patrón called them, were the Secret Services' special forces, the Special Power Armor Team. They flew around in hover-armor suits equipped with missiles, rocket-propelled grenades, and rotary machine-guns. Their usual tactic was to kill everything in sight, then kill it again just to be sure.

  "People don't like to see them on protection duty," Patrón said, granting me that point, but then following it up with one of his own. "But that's not true when it comes to other operations. Footage of the SPAT in action against your killers would be PR gold. Think of the message it would send."

  "That we're so desperate to bring in criminals that we need to bring in a squad of flying tanks?"

  "That we're ready to defend our people and our country with devastating firepower against which no one can hope to stand. The deterrent value alone will be staggering."

  I groaned. "Just let me handle this, all right? I have two words for you: collateral damage. Talk about loose cannons. You send the SPAT into action against civilians, and you'll end up with blood everywhere at the best and dead innocents at worst."

  "You're not helping your side of the argument."

  "Just–" I struggled to find the right words. Last night finally seemed to be catching up to me. "Just let me handle it."

  "Where are you now?"

  I didn't feel like telling him, but I knew he could call up the information on the hovercar I'd rode here in, instantly.

  "Heading into the National Cathedral."

  "Really?" Patrón paused. "Going in for your first confession?"

  "I have nothing to confess," I said. "I'm three days old. I'm as innocent as I've ever been."

  "Just keep out of trouble, Dooley. We don't need you kidnapped again."

  He made it sound like it was my fault those Kalis had grabbed me and pulled me into the Tidal Pool.

  "I'll do my best."

  "And report in to me when you get out. That's an order."

  "Is the President actually in the room with you and listening in on the conversation, or are you just mugging for the hidden cameras she's placed in your office?"

  "No comment. Now get moving."

  I stopped and craned back my neck to take in the facade of the National Cathedral. The gothic spires of gray stone stabbed up into the sky above me, defiantly archaic in a postmodern world. Sculptures of countless forgotten saints loomed over me, looking out over a city that swarmed around them without affecting them one bit except by the slow erosion of acid rain.

  I climbed up the wide, long Pilgrim Steps and entered the towering building under an arch filled with nude people emerging from the roiling sea. My culture layer identified it as a tympanum sculpted by Frederick Hart, entitled "Ex Nihilo." My nanoserver translated the Latin as meaning "out of nothing."

  I knew the feeling.

  I cranked the culture layer down as I walked into the building, or I knew I would be overwhelmed. The kind of artistic detail that goes into constructing a cathedral can stun you with its naked glory – which is the idea, really. Trying to absorb several weeks' worth of footnotes in a short walk can drive you to the brink of madness as you contemplate how so many people dedicated their lives to building this place.

  As I made my way into the nave, a volunteer guide greeted me, a tall woman with Asian features and green eyes. "Welcome to the National Cathedral," she said. "Our next tour begins in about thirty minutes. If you like, you could wander about and meet in the transept when it's time."

  "Actually," I said, "I'm here looking for someone."

  I shut my mouth then, realizing that if I asked after Ronan Dooley V she might associate the name with his famous ancestor and recognize me. Since I didn't know who in the cathedral might be part of whatever Five had become involved with, I didn't want to tip my hand that soon.

  Instead, I described Five in detail, right down to his graying temples. The woman nodded as I spoke.

  "You're looking for Ron?" she asked. "He's one of our volunteers. Can I ask what this is about?"

  I smiled warmly. "Just a distant relative dropping by for a visit. His son told me I might be able to find him here."

  "Right," she said with delight. "I'm sure he'll be thrilled to see you." She peered down the center aisle of the cathedral and pointed through the transept to the place where the choir stood during services.

  "The last I saw Ron, he was walking that way," she said. "He was with Father G, and they were heading for one of the meeting rooms in the basement."

  I used an easy smile to cover my surprise at hearing the priest's name, and the fact that he was here with Five. I reminded myself that while this was the home base of the Episcopal Church in America, the National Cathedral made a point of welcoming people of all faiths – even radical Catholic priests.

  "Thank you," I said.

  She offered me a printed guide to the cathedral. I stared at it for a second, amazed that anyone still bothered with such things. Then I took it and moved down the central nave toward the transept.

  The arched stone ceiling towered above me in a way that inspired vertigo if I looked up at it for too long. With space at such a premium in DC, most ceilings hung low, barely over eight feet from the floor. This seemed like either an awesome tribute to God or a stunning waste, depending on which side of the faith line you fell.

  Sunlight streamed in through the multicolored stained-glass windows that lined the nave's southern wall. I looked up to see my favorite, the one that Colleen had adored too: the Space Window. I looked for the piece of moon rock embedded in it and found it with my naked eyes, no layers required.

  For me, the only thing in the cathedral
that topped the Space Window was the grotesque of Darth Vader's head that hung high up on the north side of one of the three-hundredfoot-tall towers. That probably has to do more with my twentieth-century youth than anything else. When I was a kid, the idea of colonies on the Moon and Mars seemed like science fiction. I never would have believed that tourists would go to such places on vacation. I still didn't have a working lightsaber though.

  I played the tourist as I walked, pretending to take in all of the amazing art and architecture but really keeping my eye out for people looking for me. The cathedral had no thrid cameras in it, a real anomaly in public buildings. Every bishop over the decades had been adamant about keeping them out. They wanted only the eyes of God watching over their flock, not those of Man.