by Tony Daniel
Coalbridge shook his head and was about to make his way around them in bemusement when the Peepsie punk reached out a quick hand and shoved him into the side of a bus.
His head whacked into the paper-covered sheet metal. Shot of pain through his skull. Yellow-tinged floaters momentarily in front of his eyes.
The Peepsie punk was stronger than he looked.
Reaction and training took over Coalbridge’s body. He had to end this quickly, and he wasn’t going to be able to use reason. Coalbridge reached between his coat buttons, felt the truncheon’s handle, activated it with a twist and spun around to face—
Some other dude.
This one was entirely People’s Front, a real Chavista down to the torn dungarees and paisley shirt. There was something much more authentic about him, too—if it was a him. A mane of curly, tangled hair, and underneath—yeah, it was a guy. Who smelled of patchouli and cheap incense. A chest draped in beads. Dirt—or something grimy—smeared into the wrinkles of his exposed skin.
Was this the Peepsie version of a medicine man or shaman? Did they even have those?
But the Peepsie-shaman was not confronting Coalbridge. Instead he was smiling benignly at the punk guy and Joan Placid, putting a firm hand on the punk’s shoulder.
“Come on, brother, you know better,” said the shaman in a low, calm voice. “Violence won’t solve anything.”
For a moment, the Peepsie punk glared hatred at Coalbridge. But the calming hand of the shaman and Coalbridge’s truncheon, glowing with a pale purple Q-generated fire, gave the punk pause.
“If you go after him, you just prove him right,” said the hippie-shaman. “War is the problem, not the solution.”
The shaman pointed to the bus behind Coalbridge. “This man’s victims see him, don’t worry,” he said.
Coalbridge turned and looked behind him. Nothing but the bus, the poster-like plasterings. Faces. Hundreds of faces, staring out at him. Some smiling, some mysterious, some even sexy. Then he realized what he was seeing.
The Peepsies, or someone, had turned the sides of the bus—all the buses—into remembrance walls. They were plastered with photographs of the dead. Some had a short paragraph, a birth and death date. Some had no lettering at all, but silently, wordlessly attested to the fact that this person had been here, had walked the Earth, and was no more.
The Peepsie punk started to say something else to Coalbridge, but the shaman gave the punk a sharp look. Finally the Peepsie punk shook his head like an angry, confused bull. “He fucking started it,” he said to the shaman. “His kind started the whole thing. All the fucking suffering. They violated the Limit and brought the retribution down on us.”
The Peepsie punk was making correlation into cause. The sceeve had arrived shortly after the first Q-based FTL drive had been sent to the Centauris. There was talk that humanity had set off a trip wire that alerted the sceeve to come marauding.
“Maybe so, maybe so. But we have to end this, brother,” said the shaman. “Haters only breed more hate.”
Another moment of fuming hesitation from the punk. Another glance at the truncheon. Then the punk turned away. “I guess you’re right. . . .”
“This one will wake up one day and realize that there’s innocent blood on his hands, that he’s collaborated in the greatest fraud in history,” the shaman said, nodding toward Coalbridge while simultaneously leading the Peepsie punk away. “And that’s the day he’ll put a bullet in his own brain.”
“Won’t be soon enough,” the Peepsie punk shouted back at Coalbridge. But he allowed himself to be shepherded away.
Coalbridge powered down his truncheon but did not put it away yet.
Ptupt.
Joan Placid spat in Coalbridge’s general direction, hit the side of the bus beside his head. She glared defiantly at him. Coalbridge looked her straight in the eyes, trying to communicate what a very bad idea it would be to fuck with him any more. He really didn’t want to hurt her. It was beginning to dawn on him that to do so would have political repercussions. Career repercussions.
Which might mean losing his new command.
Remaining earthbound.
Thankfully, Joan Placid seemed to get the message, for, after a moment, she turned and followed the others without taunting him further.
Coalbridge sighed, replaced the truncheon in his coat, and glanced at his watch. Oh, hell. Late to the most important meeting in his professional life—and delayed by Peepsies!
It wasn’t fair. Today of all days.
Coalbridge ducked back down to prone position and, as fast as he could, scooted under the bus, under the plastered photocopied remembrances of the dead. Greasy street tar. A sheen of skuzzy curd. His coat—a gift from his parents at his long-ago graduation—was going to be ruined. No nanotech wonder treatment was going to be able to resurrect it this time.
He rolled out on the underside and looked up—
Oh, crap.
—into the flat panel of an unmanned UADS directional emitter.
A hellfryer.
The active denial system was turn-of-the-century tech, a crowd-dispersal device used by the marines since the 1990s. The addition of an a.i. servant had given it a whole new lease on life. He could hear the UADS’s old-school batteries whining softly, building for discharge. Coalbridge raised his hand, rapidly pulled his I.D. lanyard from within his coat, and flashed his Pentagon pass.
Click. The whine died away. The emitter screen lowered its angle to a rest position.
“Captain James Dasein Coalbridge the Third,” said a voice from the UADS.
“Call me Jim.”
“No, thank you. I am under directive to keep citizen interaction formal. Are you all right, Captain Coalbridge?”
“I’m fine.” Coalbridge pulled himself to his feet. “Hell of a day to come to work.”
“I’ll say, sir,” the UADS replied. It had a remarkably pleasant and wholly uni-gendered voice. Strange choice for a robo-cop. “I see you’re Extry,” the robot continued. “Do you happen to know the servant named DAFNE, by any chance? The servant who participated in the Skyhook Raid?”
Happen to know? Hell, he’d spent almost every second of the past two years wiied to her through the salt. He’d say he knew her about as well as a person could know a servant.
“Of course I do,” Coalbridge said. “One of her iterations was the XO of my last command, and she’s been a friend of mine for years before that.”
“Then tell her we’re all proud of what she’s accomplishing when you speak to her next—that is, if you don’t mind, sir.” The UADS rolled back a couple of feet to clear a path for him. “I speak for the Local MP-38 Class Peacekeeper Network, I mean. She’s really going where no one has gone before.”
“Will do,” Coalbridge said. “And thanks for not cooking my goose.”
“Not a problem, sir,” the UADS replied. “But watch your back.” Suddenly, the UADS’s flat panel shot back up and aimed directly at the undercarriage of the next bus over.
“You, under the bus—remain where you are! Identify yourself!” it called out. This time the voice was most certainly not uni-gendered. More like the voice of a very male, very patriarchal God.
“For Christ’s sake, let me get out from under here, MP-38,” came the reply. “My name is Leher. We went through this yesterday. And the day before that, as I recall.”
“Rise slowly,” intoned the UADS.
It was the hippie shaman. Even at this distance, the patchouli scent was unmistakable.
The hippie pulled himself slowly out from under the bus and rose shakily to his feet. He held out his hand, flashed an I.D. at the UADS.
“Lieutenant Commander Leher, it’s nice to see you this morning,” the UADS said.
Holy crap.
“You do this on purpose, MP-38.”
“One can never be sure,” said the UADS. It turned on its treads and made ready to head back down the line of buses. “You gentlemen have a nice day.”
&
nbsp; “Thanks,” Coalbridge said. He turned to Leher. “You’re navy?” he asked.
“No, sir,” Leher replied. “I’m one of you. Extry all the way, Captain. Heart of vacuum and bleed space when I’m cut. Except I’m not too fond of actual space, to tell the truth, and actual bleeding is something I normally try to avoid.”
Looking at the man, you would never tell he was Extry. He seemed . . . not the type. And now that he was no longer pretending to be a Peepsie shaman, he seemed even less military. He was hunched, almost—
Almost cringing, Coalbridge thought.
And his face was not a picture of command and gentle certainty, as it had appeared before, but nervousness. The slightest twitch around his left eye, too.
And anyway, Leher’s hair was utterly, completely nonregulation. Or was it? Leher smiled a crooked smile, reached for the back of his hair, and gave it a hard yank. The hair parted from his scalp in the front as if by magic.
It was a wig. A very convincing hippie wig.
Beneath the wig was a shaggy blond mop of hair that was, nonetheless, of the required shortness.
“I’ll be damned. And the beard?”
“That’s permanent, I’m afraid.” He ran a hand through the beard and combed out a couple of crumbs. “Got to toast it every morning if you want that ‘eaten in’ look.”
“You toast your beard?”
“Put toast crumbs in it, I mean,” Leher replied with a grin. “Needs to be whole grain, too, or you’ll never fool ’em. I take it you haven’t had to come to work this way very often?”
“I’m deep space. But they’ve had me stowed at the New Pentagon out in the burbs for the past couple of weeks cooling my heels. I haven’t been down to the Capitol complex since I came back planetside.”
“Yes, well, let’s just say that around here camouflage is the better part of valor these days.” Leher unslung the green canvas daypack he was carrying, opened it, and bid Coalbridge to look inside. “I can only afford so much dry cleaning on GS-6 pay. My uniform’s got ballistic crunch in it. None of that fancy self-cleaning stuff.” The flat black of a full-dress Extry uniform stared back at Coalbridge.
“I should’ve done that,” Coalbridge said. And not only that, Coalbridge thought. “Jesus, it was really stupid of me to draw a truncheon on those idiots. I could’ve killed them.”
“It was flashing purple. I saw you had it set on ‘give an interesting time,’ not kill.”
“I guess you’re right,” said Coalbridge. “It was a reflex.”
“Then you’ve got good instincts. A person has to experience this shit to believe the kinds of things they’ll say to you,” Leher said, motioning toward the buses and beyond to the demonstrators. “I don’t think they mean half of it. Not that they don’t have a point at times.”
“I’m a baby-killer?”
“All the conspiracy stuff is bullshit, of course, but the government hasn’t been exactly transparent lately.”
“The War Powers Act is necessary. Hell, it doesn’t go far enough,” Coalbridge said darkly. “You’re Extry. You know it’s about to be rock-and-roll time again.”
“We know that,” Leher replied, “but the Peepsies don’t. And nobody is willing to tell them because then they’d know the even more horrible truth. That the government has been running around like a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off, and even the Extry’s split on what to do next.”
“You sound like a Peepsie.”
“I’ve been called worse,” Leher replied. “Sceeve-fucking creepy-crawler springs to mind.” He smiled and held out his hand. “Lieutenant Commander Griffin Leher, sir. Xeno Division.”
Xeno, thought Coalbridge. That explains it. Worse than a lawyer.
And Leher. Where had he run across that name?
The xenologicals were a strange bunch, even by Extry standards.
“I’m Jim Coalbridge.” He omitted his title because Leher could see he was a captain from the single gold fretting of oak leaves on his hat’s visor. His rank was also indicated by the insignia on the shoulderboards of his planetside service blacks. “My craft’s the Joshua Humphreys. Or will be, when she’s all fitted out.”
“Patrol vessel?”
“Try a new-christened frigate. Second in her class. She’s after the Jonas Salk.”
Leher smiled, amused at Coalbridge’s pride. “My mistake,” he said. “Coalbridge, huh?” Leher scratched his chin. “You related to the Coalbridge who commanded the Skyhook Raid back in ’67 by any chance?”
Oh, hell. There was that again. His fuck-ups in that operation had gotten people killed. Friends. He’d been twenty-six. He could only plead extreme youth and inexperience, but that was no comfort to the dead, he was certain. To have survived the invasion, only to be killed by some greenhorn lieutenant’s incompetence—he was ashamed of himself.
“Yeah. I know him,” Coalbridge said.
“Well, that guy gave me a career. Tell him thank-you when you next see him, will you?”
“He’s me,” Coalbridge said sullenly.
“Figured it might be,” said Leher. “Sore spot, huh?”
Coalbridge nodded, but frowned and indicated with a shrug that he didn’t have the inclination to explain further.
“All right, then. Want to walk with me the rest of the way? I know a shortcut that’ll take us around that ten-minute line at the First National scanner.”
Coalbridge brightened. Maybe he wasn’t going to be late after all. And he had a pseudo-Peepsie-shaman Extry officer to thank for it.
So Leher was Xeno. A “creep,” as they were called—and called themselves.
The sceeve experts.
Leher. Shit, of course. Leher of the Poet Communiqué. The very reason he was headed to the presidential office this morning.
“You write that report that’s got them all buzzing, Leher?” he asked.
“Call me Griff,” Leher said. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, and if I did, it sounds like that would be classified.” Leher stroked his beard as he spoke and tried to hide his pleased smile.
The blushing author himself, Coalbridge thought. I’ll be damned.
“And you’re the creep behind that Depletion Report that came out last summer, too. The one that made sense of the withdrawal.”
“Again, no idea what you mean.”
“Whoever wrote it made some goddamn bold predictions on sceeve activity for the future. Predictions that are pretty much coming true, if you ask me.”
Coalbridge wanted to talk to this guy. Find out what he knew, all he knew, about the sceeve. But this was not the place for discussing battle plans. Like Leher said, the communiqué was classified. He could mention one thing he’d particularly agreed with, however.
“I liked your recommendation in the Depletion Report summary on full officer status for servants,” he said. “Every space-based exper believes in it, but I’ve found out the idea isn’t too popular back here.”
“The data are absolutely convincing,” Leher said. “The more autonomy the servants are given, the more effective they are in battle. We studied hundreds of engagements.” Leher shrugged. “Besides, as far as I’m concerned, they’re people.”
“Hell, yeah, they are.”
Leher might make a very useful acquaintance at some point. Coalbridge had done his own study of the sceeve—up close and personal—and he would love to compare notes. Or have some on-the-scene expertise. And Leher had written that report. This guy wasn’t just a creep—he was the creepiest of the creeps.
No doubt, creeps were oddballs. To become one was for all intents and purposes to leave the command track. They were also said to be a bunch of sadists, like the aliens they studied. And all crazy as loons.
As if to confirm Coalbridge’s judgment, Leher took a few steps forward, then came to a dead halt. As far as Coalbridge could see there was nothing blocking the other man’s path. But when Coalbridge came up beside Leher, he saw what had caused the abrupt stop. There was a long cr
ack in the street. The glassy coating abruptly ended and a small fissure stretched across their path. It ran deep into the asphalt under the layer of glass. The crack was less than an inch wide, but it was unbroken.
After a moment’s thought, Coalbridge understood what was going on.
Some sort of OCD that wouldn’t let the guy step over cracks, something like that. This was not an uncommon phenomenon. You saw that a lot in the traumatized, and if you were an officer in the military, you had to deal with similar psychological problems on practically a daily basis. Or maybe it wasn’t trauma. Maybe Leher had come out of the womb a freak. In any case, Coalbridge knew what to do with such nutcase behavior.
Give in, to a degree. Channel, don’t obstruct.
Leher was slapping his pockets and muttering to himself, something about a pin or a pen.
“Got the cards,” Leher said. “Should have it, too.”
Coalbridge looked around and found a scrap piece of wood about a foot across and a few feet long—it was detritus from some previous sceeve attack, some fallen structure—and plopped it down over the crack so that it formed a crossing.
“Your bridge, Lieutenant Commander,” he said to Leher.
Leher blinked, considered, seemed to snap out of whatever daze he’d fallen into and with a big grin stepped on the wooden crossing Coalbridge had provided.
“Guess it’s a good thing I met you, too,” he said. “Jim, was it?”
Coalbridge shrugged. “That kind of mental shit is pretty common, especially with space-based expers. We’re a superstitious lot out there.” He stepped over the crack and walked beside Leher.
“Say, you don’t have anything to write with, do you?”
“Got my Palace and a blink-up keyboard.”
Leher shook his head. “No, that won’t do.” Suddenly his hand flew up to his breast pocket. He dug around inside it, came up with nothing.
“Is whatever you’re looking for in your uniform pocket?” Coalbridge gently asked.
