“After you left me, you managed to maintain a sufficiently low profile that I have no data about you for nearly a century. Well done, by the way.”
I said nothing. No matter how much information she had, I saw no profit for me in confirming or denying anything.
“Fine,” she said. “Let’s get to the parts you will most definitely care about. Not quite thirty years ago, on a planet far from here, Jon Moore, a young man, early twenties, very mature for his age, joined the Shosen Advanced Weapons Corporation, the Saw, as a recruit. When he left, as was their policy they kept only the most basic relevant data about him. That data, of course, included a photograph.”
She sipped a bit more water.
“Had you then vanished once again,” she said, “I might never have learned you were still alive. Twelve years later, though, you got involved in a rather messy situation on a Frontier Coalition planet, Macken. Normally, what happens on a world that young doesn’t matter much, but you managed to attract the attention of some important officials of not only that coalition, but also two major megacorps, Kelco and Xychek. You also somehow ended up owning a neutered Predator-class assault vehicle, which is an unusual thing for an individual to own. Do I have your attention now?”
I nodded. “I’m listening.”
“Nobody involved in that situation wanted any of it public, so most of the records vanished. My family, like many of the families, has people who feed us information scattered around the various coalitions, so sometime afterward, they noted your name and flagged it to my attention. Names repeat, and though I remember noticing that you weren’t aging as fast as I was, I figured that after a century it had to be another person.
“About a year and a half later, though, a man with the same name made some enemies in the Expansion Coalition when he played some gangsters, a religious cult, and coalition troops against one another. Once again, it was in everybody’s interest for the data to vanish—but once again, it didn’t entirely go away.”
She leaned a little closer. “I sincerely doubt anyone else in any significant family even noticed, because, Jon, you’re just not that big a deal. Your name, though, meant something to me, and a lot of people who worked for me had heard it. So, the information wound its way to me. This time, I checked the photo, and it was you, just as I remembered you, not a day older, exactly the same.”
She settled back against the bed. “By the time I realized that fact, though, you’d fallen off the data trails again. I considered hunting you down, just for the satisfaction of it, but however hard your ego might find this to believe, I really did get over you and move on with my life a long, long time ago.”
That was the first thing she had said that I liked. I stayed silent, though.
“I’ve had children, buried a couple of husbands, and run our holdings for all this time,” she said. “Were you simply another old man living his life in other parts of settled space, we wouldn’t be having this talk. But you’re not. I couldn’t shake the fact that you never aged, though I actually came for a time to doubt that this other Jon Moore could be you. A year later, though, you managed to anger multiple coalition officials and kill a major scientist on Heaven, and by then parts of my body were beginning to fail.”
She coughed and drank some more water. “From what little I’ve been able to learn about you, you must have come close to dying more than once. You must have had to face the prospect of your own death. It’s not a pretty sight, but now I see it every day. My initial impulse was to track you down to learn what stopped you from aging in the hopes that you could use on me whatever it is you use on yourself, but then I as I gathered from the available data how many people you cared about were either badly injured or killed, I realized it was nothing you were doing. Had it been something under your control, you would have saved them. I came to accept that you’re a fluke, some sort of genetic miracle. I figure you live as you do to hide that fact.”
She stared at me for confirmation, but I again stayed silent.
“Fine, fine,” she said. She chuckled. “If I were younger and had more time, I might have tried to find you and persuade you to let some of the scientists who work in our various companies try to figure out what keeps you young, but I learned from my father’s death—he held out over a decade, you know, but they never found a cure—that research of that type takes longer than I have.”
She smiled. “Are you really just going to sit there?”
I forced a smile. “I told you that I enjoyed a good fiction, and you’re telling a fine tale.”
“Well, we’re almost at the end. As I implied earlier, my family is only one of the many who control a great deal of the assets of the worlds. If my sources are correct, and I’m quite sure they are, you’ve recently made the acquaintance of Luis Kang, the head of another family. Kang has rather unfortunate tastes, and apparently you caused quite a stir when you interrupted him in the pursuit of them.”
I forced myself to stay silent. Tastes? That she could refer to child abuse so callously made me want to rip the plugs and tubes out of her.
“He’s hunting for you, you know,” she said. “That’s how my people heard your name most recently. Anyway, another of the families that matters, another one whose home is right here on Haven, is the Schmidts. Hanson Schmidt controls their holdings.”
She whispered to her comm and handed it to me.
“Here’s a picture of him.”
A typical corporate exec type stared back at me. Somewhere between thirty and eighty, given his wealth, with golden skin, brown eyes, and short, dark hair, he wasn’t the sort of person who would stand out in any executive meeting. I extended the comm to her, but she shook her head.
“How old do you think he is?” she said.
“Hard to tell.”
“He’s been trying to pass himself off as his own son, and he’s been succeeding, throwing huge concerts and dances and generally coming out, as if he were the child his father had kept under wraps for years—but I’m not buying it. I have photos of him aging normally until about thirty years ago, when he stopped going out in public at all. The next time any images were available, they were of this ‘son.’” She pointed at the picture. “That is Hanson, Jon. He’s managed to reverse aging and get younger. He’s older than I am. He’s the best looking one-hundred-and-seventy-five-year-old man who’s ever existed.”
I stared at her. “That’s impossible,” I said. I handed back the comm.
She took it this time. “It should be impossible,” she said, “but I can assure you that it is not. I’ve done my best to gather all the information about him that I can, but as much as our families—all the major families—cooperate in some way, they also tremendously distrust one another. Consequently, all I’ve been able to learn is that what rumors there are suggest that someone has been giving these anti-aging treatments to him, some scientist I must assume. Somehow that first human colony planet, Pinkelponker, appears to be involved, though I don’t know how.”
I concentrated on maintaining the same expression and not moving. If technology from Pinkelponker was involved, or perhaps if a person from there was somehow helping Schmidt, I might be able to learn something more about what happened to my home world. If the people involved worked with the sick, it’s even possible that they had run across Jennie; the government had made her use her healing talent for them.
I focused on a spot next to her eyes. I forced myself to stop speculating and resume listening.
“Whatever is making him younger might work on me,” she said. “I’m among the oldest people ever to have lived, and what’s killing me is essentially age, the final failure of many systems in my body. I want what Schmidt has.”
At the same time, if Schmidt’s secret did involve Pinkelponker, it might also tie somehow to Aggro. Whatever it was, I would not want to commit to delivering it to Omani—or to anyone—until I better understood it. “If what you say is true,” I said, “and I frankly have trouble believing it is, why n
ot just try to buy it from Schmidt?”
She shook her head. “First, he doesn’t admit that any such technology exists. The young Schmidt we see maintains steadfastly that he is the son, not the man himself. Second, any organization that controls such a technology also controls the next great source of wealth: the ability to reverse aging. That group, properly managed and with adequate resources to fund itself, would have the greatest product that ever existed in a market that would touch every human world—and it would have no competitors.”
“So what do you want from me?” I said. “I’m an old man whose closest approach to any of this power or money was my time with you.”
She shook her head again and made a face. “I’m going to ignore that ‘old man’ comment,” she said. “From the data I’ve been able to accumulate about you, it appears that from time to time you help people with problems that normal channels cannot address. It also appears that your fee for these services is frequently rather high. From the sheer amount of data about you that is not available, I gather that for the most part you manage to stay discreet. Expensive, discreet transactions are everyday occurrences in my businesses. I understand them, and I’m comfortable with them. Add the fact that we have leverage on one another—you, my illness, and me, your identity—and the match is perfect.”
She sat up straighter and waited until I was looking directly at her. “You owe me, Jon, and we both know it. As I said at the beginning, I want to hire you. I want you to break into Schmidt’s estate and bring me whatever you find that’s relevant. I want you to do it as soon as you can. I’ll pay you enough that you don’t have to work again for a century, enough that you can fall off the worlds again, enough that no one else will know your secret. I’ll sweeten the deal by doing my best to persuade Kang to leave you alone, and on delivery of whatever or whomever is helping Schmidt, I’ll give you all the data I have on you. I’ll even erase all copies.”
I maintained my gaze on her as I evaluated my options. I could do as she wanted, but if she was right, if something or someone from Pinkelponker was involved, were they working voluntarily? Or were they captives, prisoners I’d be moving from one fancy prison to another? Either way, I’d be putting them under Omani’s control. No, I saw no way I could guarantee that I would do as she wanted. Alternatively, I could take her money and see how it went, double-cross her if necessary to protect any people involved, but I didn’t want to do that to her, nor did I want her as an enemy. I could, of course, keep turning her down, but I had no clue where that would lead. I feared it was nowhere good.
“What do you think, Jon?” she said. “It’s an offer that could change your life.”
All offers are, I thought, and any that are as big as this one are likely to do as much damage as good.
A different question hit me: What if the person helping Schmidt was my sister? What if Jennie was alive and still helping people—and still under the control of others? Would I under any circumstance consider turning her over to Omani?
Of course not, which meant I shouldn’t consider it for anyone either.
No, I would not do it.
I stood. “I’m sorry, Omani, but you have me confused with someone else with the same name. You need a younger man, maybe a lot of them, for that kind of project. I can’t help you.”
She stared at me for several seconds. “Last chance, Jon: Take this job. Make a lot of money, and help me.”
She’d tightened her grip on the comm and had her left index finger poised over it. She wasn’t going to let me refuse. If I wouldn’t do it, she’d take the next best anti-aging option available to her—me—and hope her scientists could solve the riddle of my lack of aging in time to help her. In parallel, she’d hire someone else to go after Schmidt’s secret. I put my hands in my pants pockets and looked down as if considering her words. I thumbed the distress call to Lobo.
“Omani,” I said, “I am truly sorry for leaving you all those years ago.” I stepped closer to her. “The answer, though, is still no.”
“I understand, Jon,” she said.
She reached up and put her right hand on my cheek.
She pressed her left index finger onto the comm.
“I’m sorry, too,” she said, “but I can’t let you go.”
CHAPTER 24
Jon Moore
I pulled my hands from my pockets and extended the metal fingers of the exoskeleton.
As they were coming out, Randar swung the door open and approached me. He held a gun against his leg; I hoped he wouldn’t want to point it anywhere near Omani. He watched my face.
I curled my right fingers into a fist; the metal ones followed.
“Let’s wait outside for my men,” he said. He backed toward the door.
I stepped forward with my left leg, pushed off my right, and at the same time swung my right fist toward his stomach. I might have been fast enough on my own to hit him before he could raise the gun and shoot me, but with the exoskeleton speeding my movements, it was no contest. I hit him before he’d lifted the gun halfway toward me. The exoskeleton also amplified the force so much that my punch knocked him backward many meters. Whatever I’d hit had felt hard, so I hoped he was wearing the body armor someone in his job would typically wear, but I didn’t have time right then to worry about him.
I backed into the room and slammed the door shut a second before a shot hit the back of my left leg. The armor stopped the bullet, and the exoskeleton kept me upright, but it hurt. I teetered for a second or two.
“I’m sorry, Jon,” Omani said, “but you’ll be fine. They can fix whatever I hit in your leg.”
I withdrew the exoskeleton’s fingers, jumped forward, and swatted the gun from her hand.
“Ow,” she said. “How are you still moving?”
I ignored the question and checked around her for more weapons.
She took the opportunity to slap my face.
I found nothing.
Her comm showed Randar on his knees and retching. He was also screaming, presumably at his staff. Others would be here soon.
I went behind Omani’s bed and pushed it toward the door. Wires and cables stretched taut.
“You’ll kill me!” she screamed. “Stop!”
I stepped behind the machines next to her bed. The cables from them to the wall were long enough that they could be anywhere in the room. I pushed on them at waist height, but they were heavy and wouldn’t budge. They had to be built to be able to move themselves, but I didn’t have time to locate and learn their controls.
“What are you doing?” Omani screamed. “Balin!”
“He can’t hear you,” I said. “Remember?”
I extended the exoskeleton’s fingers again and formed them into two wide, flat surfaces. I crouched, left leg behind me, and engaged the exoskeleton as I pushed on the two stacks of machines, one metal hand on each stack. They slid forward, and the bed moved in front of them. I cranked up the force of the exoskeleton, pushed, and the metal of the machines began to bend. I dialed back the force and pushed again. The two machines and the bed scraped across the floor. In a few more seconds, I had the bed and the machines jammed against the door.
“They can see everything you’re doing,” Omani said. “There’s no way you can hide, and no place you can go.”
I went back to her the bed, grabbed her comm, dropped it, and stepped on it. The exoskeleton’s foot broke it easily.
“I’m counting on them seeing in here,” I said. “No way is Randar coming through that door when you’re blocking it. He won’t risk hurting you.”
“You did,” she said. “You could have killed me.”
“If I’d wanted to kill you,” I said, “you’d already be dead. All I want to do is to leave and run as far from here as possible.”
She laughed. “Good luck with that. We’re both trapped in here until they cut through that wall. Which they will. Balin will come for me as quickly as he can.”
I withdrew the exoskeleton’s fingers, pulle
d the comm from my pocket, and put in its earpiece. “How far?” I subvocalized to Lobo.
“Thirty seconds out,” he said, “but I don’t see you anywhere in the back. Should I come to the front?”
“No,” I subvocalized, so Omani wouldn’t hear me. “You were right; it was a trap. I’m coming out the hard way.”
I couldn’t use my nanomachines while Balin was monitoring me, but I’d expected that limitation. I extended the exoskeleton’s fingers again and punched the wall on the rear side of the house. Wood cracked and exposed a layer of permacrete. I had no way to know for sure how they’d constructed the house, but it was unlikely to have been metal-reinforced. The permacrete alone would have been enough to stop most normal projectile weapons of the time of its construction.
“Jon,” Omani said, “how do you see this ending?”
I turned to the side and kicked the permacrete hard, as hard as my practice with the exoskeleton had taught me I could manage while still staying standing.
“You won’t get out of here,” she said, “and even if you do, Balin’s men will be waiting below and will capture you.”
The exoskeleton struggled to stabilize as I kicked the wall again and again. Cracks appeared in the permacrete, and then a small hole. The permacrete wasn’t thick, maybe seven centimeters, and it was old, probably from the original construction of the house.
“If by some miracle you evade them,” she said, “I will find you. I’ll team with Kang if I have to; once I tell him how old you are, he’ll want to keep you alive.”
I kept kicking, and the hole grew bigger.
I heard a sizzling sound and turned in time to see a beam cut a thin slice through the wall on my right. It wouldn’t be long before they’d be able to make a big enough hole to shoot through.
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