by Bright,R. F.
Tessyier reached for it, but Boyne’s dark stare stopped him cold. A menacing tone took hold of the room. Boyne dangled the glassine envelope in Tessyier’s face. “And the elusive Mr. Tuke?”
Tessyier raked his fingers across his chest.
Boyne put the glassine envelope in the wooden box, held it up to Tessyier, then spun it between his fingers, tossed it into the air like a carnival juggler, then caught it with the metal briefcase, which he slammed shut. Tessyier stared wide-eyed, then turned and disappeared into a closet for a few seconds, before backing out a wheeled suitcase. Rippp! He tore a small notepad from a Velcro patch and handed it to Boyne. “He’s here,” he said. “On a 286-foot refrigerated cargo freighter he converted to a seagoing server-farm, currently about a thousand miles off the coast of North Carolina. Heading dead east, on a course for the Mediterranean. They keep to a rigorous nautical protocol — make all their hourly weather and position reports on this frequency,” he tapped on the notebook, “using this international call sign, right here — RHH7.”
Boyne thumbed through the log-book, noting the neatly handwritten columns collating each broadcast. It was well organized and dizzying. “Why would Tuke expose himself like this?”
“He’s not. Ships always call in weather and position reports — that’s normal. You don’t expose yourself by doing what’s normal. Anomalies draw attention. The hunter always notices change.”
“And you know it’s him? Tuke?”
“I know it’s not RHH7,” he said impatiently. “The 286-foot Russian freighter assigned that call-sign sank in Sevastopol Harbor, 2028. I know Tuke bought a 286-foot refrigerated freighter from the Romanian Navy, in 2028. Black Sea neighbors. Coincidence?”
Boyne pretended to be fascinated. “If you buy the premise, you own the bits.”
Tessyier tucked the last of his personal items into the suitcase’s outer pockets. “What remains of the global shipping fleet sends out weather reports so everyone knows what the weather is. How else would they know? They’ve created a self-organizing weather bureau. A community network. But! Weather is useless without a position. And! They rely on each other for rescues.”
“Why would Tuke choose such a vulnerable place to hide? Why be on a boat? He could go anywhere. He has a jet, I hear.”
“He has some kind of jet, but he works from wherever he is. He works all the time. He’s fully engaged no matter where he is. And he moves around. A lot! Or disappears. No one knows where to. He’ll show up on the network every day, then no one sees him for a month. But this refrigerated freighter? This server farm? It has been anchored — anchored! — twenty miles off the coast of Iceland, cooling all those servers, for over twenty years. But now? All of a sudden it’s going somewhere? Maybe Malta? I’m guessing Malta.”
“Malta?” said Boyne.
“He’s been meeting with these Europeans in Malta, over the years, at some kind of base he has there. But recently, he’s been flying there in a rush.”
“So there are geeks in Europe, too?”
“We’re everywhere, we’re everywhere!” Tessyier howled, warming to his sense of proximal victory. “They weren’t geeks. Remember, Tuke got the Nobel in economics. He’s an economist who codes. He was meeting with economists. The money changers. The voodoo scientists.”
“None of that proves nothin’. This would be the worst moment in your life to be up to no good.”
Tessyier tossed a shirt onto a pile of leave-behinds and made an open study of Boyne’s face. It was menace incarnate. “Fair enough,” he said, apprehensively. “I didn’t want to divulge any of Tuke’s personal information. But look. These weather reports are monitored by Tuke’s entire network, so the ship’s crew drop in little cryptograms, double-entendres, puns, jokes, just to be funny for their friends and family back on land.”
Boyne thought that extremely likely.
Tessyier took the log-book and pointed to an entry. “Look at this one.” Squeezed into a cluster of notes . . . C22H17CIN2.
Boyne made a clueless frown.
Tessyier explained brusquely, “Chlorophenyl, H17 diphenyl, methyl imidazole . . . It’s a crypto glyph!”
Boyne’s contempt for Tessyier was becoming more and more difficult to disguise.
Tessyier raised his hands hopelessly, “Athlete’s Foot! It’s foot cream! Antifungal ointment. Tuke’s got chronic Athlete’s Foot. It’s the source of a thousand jokes. That small entry. That’s a snarky, extra-esoteric geek way to let everyone know Tuke is in the midst of an outbreak.” Tessyier clapped his hands and laughed.
Boyne feigned a conspiratorial pleasure in Tuke’s predicament, but he’d just as soon pound this arrogant bastard with a rubber mallet. Where was that Quaker modesty?
“Coincidence? The crew wouldn’t bother mentioning foot cream, not in code, unless it was Tuke himself. And this is exactly what you’d expect them to do.”
Boyne made a show of accepting this theory, but he was here to play the villain. “It’s just stupid enough to believe,” said Boyne. “So you’re tellin’ me Tuke’s out to sea. Could take a while to verify that — speculation. That’s all this is. A handwritten list and a flyin’ fuckin’ leap.”
Tessyier looked at Boyne as though he’d just spit on the floor. “Why would I make up a story? That guy’s going to get me killed.” Boyne started to speak, but Tessyier was on a rant. “If he’s got to go, or I’ve got to go, well guess what?” He made a flubbery face. “Goodbye, Mr. Tuke. Rule #39: self-preservation leads to sincere victories. Check the Wikituke!” He turned and probed all the zippers on his suitcase. “You’ll find there his last 73 coordinates, course heading, speed, everything you’ll need to intercept him. My guess, once again — Malta.”
“What’s so suspicious about an economist meeting up with other economists?” Boyne’s interest had actually been piqued; this was starting to smell like steak.
“Levi was uncharacteristically intense about Malta and currency exchanges. He never talked to me directly about that, but I overheard him talking to ReplayAJ. It’s just a guess, but it feels right. Yeah, Malta.”
Boyne set the briefcase on the desk, and laughed sarcastically. “ReplayAJ?”
“Unique names are so much more than unforgettable.”
Boyne tapped Tessyier on the shoulder and made a display of lifting the handcuff-key and necklace from around his own neck. “I hope to high-hell you’ve guessed right,” he said, unlocking the handcuff from his own wrist and motioning for Tessyier’s. “To hazard a guess this expensive could end in a tub full’a battery acid. Just speculatin', of course.” He clamped the handcuff to Tessyier’s wrist, then ran his fingers down the wire necklace to the little key and opened the handcuff, to show Tessyier how it was done.
Tessyier nodded and reached for the key, but Boyne waved him off. “Here, put your head down. You do not want to lose this key.”
Tessyier clutched the briefcase to his chest and bent so Boyne could slip the necklace over his head.
“Aye. Looks good,” said Boyne. “Accessories — the key to an all-new you.” He slid the clasp up until it fit snugly, but comfortably, around Tessyier’s neck. “This’ll make you popular at parties.”
“Everywhere!” said Tessyier, stroking the briefcase.
“There’s no denying,” said Boyne, heading out. He stopped with the door open, and pointed at Tessyier. “You need a ride? My transporter is right outside. You don’t wanna lose that suitcase. There’s a thousand lifetimes of splendor in there.”
“Well, ah, whatever your name is, and I’m sure I don’t want to know, I could use a lift down to the Mon-Wharf? You know where that is? Down at the Point? On the Monongahela side.”
Boyne smiled. “It’s on our way.”
“Great. Thanks. I’m ready to roll — boat waiting for me! I’m ready.”
“Bet you are, lad,” he said, as Tessyier closed the door behind him.
“Won’t miss living in this contraption,” he mumbled, adding in a mechan
ical voice, “Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.”
As they walked to the elevators, Boyne caught a tinge of mid-scam excitement. That moment when the mark thinks he’s gotten over. “I’ve been trying to figure out what that title of yours means,” said Boyne, trying to grab Tessyier’s attention.
“What a joke. The suits can’t tell the geeks from the nerds, from the iStooges, from the egg-heads without a name tag. Which title did you see? They keep changing it.”
“I think it said, Brian Tessyier, Atmospherics Architect.”
“That’s one of the better ones. Tuke called me VerisimiliDude.”
Boyne sounded intrigued. “VerisimiliDude?”
Tessyier hammered the elevator button several times. “A twist on — verisimilitude. It’s a fundamental element of game theory. I’d love to explain it to you.” He drummed his fingers on the down-button feverishly. “I think you might get it,” he said, as flattery, but it fried Boyne’s last nerve.
“I just might. Just might,” he said through a strained grin.
Otis jostled from one uncomfortable position into another, belly-down, in the back seat of the Peregrine. He did not believe Gina would make it, but remained vigilant. They crossed the Ligonier Valley in a wink, and far out in the blackness a point of light appeared. Pittsburgh. Its triangular shape became more definite as they neared the misty edge of a grand volume of light traced out in shimmering reflections off three rivers, and a brightly lit wall.
Bam! They were in the city and that sense of actually being somewhere hit them. Below stood the magnificent Hibernian Gate and the always festive Gatekeeper’s Square. It was glorious, but foreboding, even from this height. They were somewhere, all right. The city. A place of allure and danger and too many tribes too close together.
They flew down the center of the blazing triangle until they reached the Point, banked left, dipped sharply and flew one mile up the Monongahela, under the Fort Pitt Bridge, Stanwix Street Bridge, Smithfield Street Bridge, 10th Street Bridge and finally the 22nd Street Bridge. MacIan reversed thrusters, and everyone tilted forward. Otis reached down and held Gina’s shoulders as they flew onto the South Side Flats.
The Flats had been leveled by an eternity of floods and one century of unbridled industry. Concrete pads the size of channel islands pocked the neighborhood, former foundations for gargantuan corrugated buildings that sheltered coke ovens and blast furnaces. Those mills had their own railroads running across the Flats, miles of track. A network of loading docks fortified the banks on both sides of the river, but none had berthed a river barge in decades.
The hospital was ten blocks up from the Mighty Mon, in a dense cluster of working-class houses within walking distance of downtown. The people who lived here now serviced those who lived and worked across the river, inside the Triangle. That’s where the money was. But on this side of the river, they had to fend for themselves. And they did. They helped each other and punished mercilessly those who did harm. This was a good place to raise children.
The local crime rate was practically zero, but the hospital drew desperate people from all around, and desperate people do desperate things. By common consent, the hospital was declared a grace zone. Nearly any offense anywhere near the hospital was a capital offense. And you were sure to get caught, as no healthy males were allowed in the waiting room. They were conscripted into a temporary Perimeter Patrol. This kept them busy, and held their loved ones hostage to their good behavior.
MacIan parked the Peregrine at the emergency entrance and popped the top. A group of the men leveled their rifles. “I’m Trooper MacIan,” he said. “I have a wounded woman here.”
The rifles lowered, but the suspicion remained. The hospital was a prime target for roving gangs who’d pulled every stunt to steal supplies, or kidnap doctors. Otis jumped out, and yelled, “Them Irish bastards shot her cold — fifty times. Come on boys, she’s bleeding to death.” They bundled Gina into an emergency room filled with grey-faced women and hospital staff in pastel surgical scrubs swarming in and around them. Two women in powder blue scrubs, sterile masks and latex gloves ran up with an empty gurney and took charge. One undid the tourniquet as the other ripped Otis’s improvised bandages off Gina, who sipped in a shuddering series of tiny breaths.
Max nudged Otis. “Is that right?”
Otis nodded.
One of the women raised her masked chin to Otis. “These yours?” She held up one of his bandages.
“Yes ma’am.”
“You with her?”
All three men nodded.
“No, you,” she said, pointing at Otis again.
“Yes ma’am.”
“You a practitioner?” The euphemism for self-taught medic.
“Yes ma’am.”
She yelled a series of commands down the hall in numerical codes and metric measurements. “You three follow me,” she said. “This woman has lost a lot of blood. So you will go left at the end of this hall. You will go to the second door on the right. You will go in and you will give two pints of blood, each. You got that?”
They did. This woman was obviously military.
“Do you have any money, or medical supplies?” She lowered her tone a bit.
MacIan raised his finger. “We’ll make this square. I’m NPF.” He flashed his nameplate. “We weren’t prepared to come here.”
The women laughed. “This is the emergency room. No one’s prepared to come here.”
Max stepped up. “We’ll be back with food. I promise. We have plenty.”
“Oh! hey, it’s OK. You promise. A promise?” Once they stopped laughing, one of them said. “Look boys, we’re going to keep these doors open, until we can’t. Until then, we will require you to pay something. Or work it off.”
The corridor came to a tee. “You! Practitioner. Take this.” She tossed Otis a small metal device with an LED read-out and a button. She held up a small ID bracelet of the same design and wrapped it around Gina’s wrist. “When you’re done giving blood, push that button. Rotate it until the green arrow lights up. Move forward and follow the green arrow. It will take you to where she is. Stay with her until I get there. Got that?”
Otis nodded.
“Once she’s stable, you’ll report to the admin office on the first floor. Tell them you’re volunteering for thirty days. We’ll put you up and feed you.”
Otis got it. This was a job offer. There was no talk of pay, but Otis recognized the potential. “Be my pleasure,” he said.
“We shall see,” she said. “You, tall guy.” MacIan pointed to himself. “You will leave your contact info with Nurse Cromwell; she’ll take your blood. I don’t know what you can do for us, but, as the tallest one here, you’re on the hook for this.”
Her partner tipped her head at Max and they both took inventory. “You’re way too young for me, but I like the hat. It’s a hot mess, but it’s gotta be warm.”
Max smiled proudly, handed her his fur hat, and made an odd gesture approaching a curtsy.
“Just my size,” she said. It nearly swallowed her whole head. She stroked the mass of fur and made a gushing fuss of herself. “It’s beautiful, soft . . . picturesque.”
Max couldn’t tell anything about these women buried in bulbous hospital scrubs, but MacIan gave him a curled lip that verified his suspicions. The one with his hat was flirting with him. “Thanks, ma’am,” he said. “I make ’em all the time.”
“Oh, really?” said the one without a hat. “When you come back to claim your friend, we’ll need three more.”
Otis brushed Max’s shoulder. “Quit while you’re ahead, son.”
Max watched helplessly as the women pushed the gurney down the hall. The one wearing his hat looked back several times before disappearing through two huge swinging doors.
Max said, to no one in particular . . . “I like the city.”
Efryn Boyne’s transporter loped across downtown Pittsburgh in the middle of the night. It was cold and the streets
were empty except for the unlucky few who serviced the office towers by night. Brian Tessyier bounced around on the fold-out seat across from Boyne clutching his briefcase and vigorously explaining himself.
Tessyier’s zeal for game theory was electrifying. Game theory spoke to him of a divine simplicity. Actual play took a far second. Playing made real the abstractions he found so satisfying — in theory. In his day job, he was required to play, but being required to play violated the sacred volunteer tenet of game theory. That troubled him greatly. It had been eating away at him for a long time.
His newfound wealth and captive audience had driven Tessyier into an adrenaline-fueled rant. “What do you think a game is?” he pontificated. “What is it? What is a game?”
Boyne was more than happy to string this pompous ass along. “You mean, any game? Like golf? Chess?”
Tessyier lit up. “Golf. Chess. Tiddlywinks. Any game! What’s common to all of them?”
Boyne was sincerely interested. He loved golf, and the current obsession with survival had severely limited philosophical discourse. “I guess I’ve never really thought about it. What do you mean by game, exactly?”
Tessyier took this as an invitation to go off. “The WikiTuke defines a game as: The voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles in pursuit of a goal.”
That sounded reasonable to Boyne, except for, “Unnecessary?”
“Interesting dichotomy?” said Tessyier. “In order to be a game, the obstacles must be unnecessarily inserted, just for fun. Remember fun. It’s important. When you put compelling obstacles in your way, under a set of rules — you have a game.”
“Simple enough,” said Boyne. “Please go on. This is fascinating.”
“Don’t over-think it. There’s no reason to go on. That’s it. Stop there. Those few requirements are everything you need to make a game.”
