No Going Back

by Mark L. Van Name

  “Thanks,” I said. I walked toward the rear of the bar.

  “Don’t tell ’em I said that,” he whispered as I walked past him. “I think they make a little more money on the special.”

  “You bet,” I said.

  A hinged thin metal door marked the entrance to the restaurant. I pushed it open and stepped in. Long, meter-wide metal strips covered all the walls. In a wide, open area in the corner opposite where I stood, a woman took orders, and two men served food. Three long bench-style tables ran in rows across the restaurant. There was enough room to walk between the benches when they were occupied, but just barely. The tables were already a quarter full.

  As I stood staring, two more people entered behind me. Before they could cut around me, I stepped to the order window. The woman taking the orders was heavyset with short curly gray hair, muscular arms, and deep brown skin.

  “You gonna order or just admire me all day?” she said.

  “Meat and beans,” I said, “and a juice.”

  “What size meat and beans,” she said, “what size juice, and what type?”

  “I’m hungry,” I said, as I realized that I was and was getting more so, because the smells in here were incredible. “You tell me.”

  She cocked her head for a moment, then jabbed something on the screen on the counter in front of her. I paid and stepped to my right.

  A few seconds later, the man on her left handed me a large metal plate and a tall metal cup. He tilted his head toward a table that stood a meter more to my right. I collected silverware there and scanned the tables. Ramon Lee sat alone at the end of the table farthest from me. Less than a meter away on his left, two of the foursome I’d seen entering the place were already eating. The space opposite Lee was empty, so I walked over to it.

  “Mind if I sit here?” I said.

  Both he and the closest person on my right shook their heads.

  I sat and for the first time checked out my plate’s contents. A huge pile of mixed black beans and chunks of meat, both in a thick dark sauce the same color as the beans, sat next to a large pile of some kind of cream-colored grain.

  “Good choice,” Lee said.

  He was eating the same thing, though a much smaller portion.

  “First time here, right?” he said. “And Ashtok at the bar told you to order it?”

  I smiled and nodded. “Right both times.” I took a bite with a few beans, a chunk of meat, and a bit of the grain. It was delicious, rich and strong with a more complex blend of flavors than I had expected. “Wow, that’s great.”

  “It is, right?” he said. “I’m Ramon.”

  “Balin,” I said. He’d be unconscious the whole time I was replacing him, but there was no point in leaving any name he could trace to me.

  “Ashtok tell you to get the large?” he said.

  I shook my head. “That was my fault. I told her I was hungry.”

  He smiled and nodded his head. “She’ll do that if you let her. She owns the place, you know.”

  “I did not,” I said around a mouthful of food.

  “Tough as an armored hull,” he said. “She’ll be working here two weeks after she’s dead.”

  I chuckled but kept eating. He was ahead of me, and I needed to be ready to leave when he did.

  “You were hungry,” he said.

  I nodded as I took another bite. When I finished chewing, I said, “Plus, it’s been a while since I ate anything this good.”

  We ate in silence then, me rushing and him eating at a more reasonable pace.

  I finished a few bites ahead of him, sat up straight, and stretched. I was so full my stomach was stretched tight. I put my arms down and leaned forward. “Not for now, but for next time, because you seem to know your way around here: If I had room for dessert, are there any worth having?” As I spoke, I pulled the serum from my right front pants pocket and palmed it. The injector would work through clothing, but he was going to feel it as a small prick; there was no way around that.

  “All three of them,” he said. “You can’t go wrong.”

  “Thanks a lot,” I said.

  “Plates and cups go in the bins behind me,” he said.

  “Thanks again.” I felt worse by the second, because he was proving to be every bit as nice a guy as the available data suggested. I appeased my conscience by resolving to pay him even more when this was over.

  I stood, stepped out from the bench, and headed for the bins he’d indicated. I had the cup on its side on the plate, which I held in my left hand, and my right hand held the fork and, next to its tines, the injector. I cut the turn tight and intentionally bumped my knee on the edge of the bench on which he sat. I lurched forward a bit, and as I did I put my hand on his shoulder as if to stop myself from falling. I activated the injector the moment I touched him.

  “Ow,” he said.

  I pulled back my hand. “I’m so sorry,” I said. I held up my right hand. “I stabbed you with my fork when I leaned on you. Clumsy and stupid.”

  He felt his shoulder. “Didn’t tear my shirt or break the skin,” he said. “No damage done.”

  Give it five minutes, I thought. “Look,” I said, “can I make it up to you by buying you one of those desserts?”

  He smiled. “Nice of you to offer, but no need. I’m just too full. Maybe next time, if I see you around here again.”

  “It’s a deal,” I said. “Next time, I’m buying.”

  I dropped off my plate and silverware, stashed the empty injector in my pants pocket, and walked out of Hobbers. I wanted to be as far from here as possible when he started feeling sick, but I forced myself to maintain a slow pace until I was out of the restaurant, down the street, and had turned the first corner. Then, I picked up speed every time I had the street to myself. I never ran, but I pushed the walking pace.

  “Come get me,” I said to Lobo over the comm, “and start monitoring the emergency channels. We need to make sure Passion’s team learns the news as soon as possible after Lee’s sickness hits the data streams.”

  I needed to change clothes, study more about Passion and her tour, and prepare myself.

  Lobo and I were going to have to do a job interview.

  CHAPTER 30

  Jon Moore

  The call came two and a half hours later. We were in orbit, resting comfortably among a cluster of weather sats. Lobo was monitoring the data presence he’d set up in York. The agency’s software contacted us and hooked us directly to Zoe Wang’s scheduling code. They wanted a meeting as soon as possible at a specific landing zone in a slot they’d reserved. The interview was to take place inside my ship.

  Lobo resolved everything with Wang’s software in a fraction of a second; I was never involved.

  We talked about the cover story and background for Lobo. All we’d shown in our postings with the agency’s databases were external shots of him with all the mods he could manage that would make him resemble a high-end executive transport. Once they came inside, the thickness of the walls and the size differential between the outside and the inside spaces would give away the armor. In the end, we settled on a variation of the truth: Lobo was customized armored transport for military and high-end corporate types.

  Lobo set about crafting a transaction log that would show how I’d acquired him.

  “They’re going to watch us land,” I said.

  “Of course,” Lobo said.

  “The question,” I said, “is, how do we want to make our approach? Precision is sure to matter; space has to be tight at some venues. But does speed? Or should caution rule? If we show off in the wrong way, it might hurt our chances at the job.”

  “Except,” Lobo said, “that I’ve made every other alternative from this agency appear, to both them and Wang, to be unavailable.”

  “If we spook them, though, we might encourage them to look into those options, and that would be bad for us. It would be good to get this right.” Ramon Lee had snagged the job, so perhaps we could learn from him.
“Does Wang’s data hold any notes or observations about Lee’s interview?”

  “No. All I can tell is that she decided very quickly, because her hiring order went out less than two hours after the interview started.”

  “Did Lee write about it anywhere?”

  “No, nor could he without violating his contract. The contract samples are in Wang’s data and very clear.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s reason it out. Wang works behind the scenes; Passion gets the spotlight. If you look better than Passion’s ship, which of course you are—”

  “Of course,” Lobo said.

  “—then Wang could worry that Passion might not like that. Can you get the specs on Passion’s ship?”

  “Yes,” Lobo said. “They’re in the data I accessed earlier.”

  “Good. Come in five percent slower than the approach speed that ship would typically use, but hit the marks exactly; that should send a message of competence without risking annoying Passion’s pilot.”

  “There’s nothing I enjoy more,” Lobo said, “than pretending to be dumb and slow.”

  “You’ll have to do a lot of that,” I said, “because I’ll need to introduce you so she can ask for things when I’m out, but you can’t be too intelligent, or our rates won’t make sense.”

  “This job keeps looking better and better.”

  * * *

  We arrived at the interview site five minutes early. Lobo executed the landing perfectly, of course, and opened a hatch as soon as he had settled.

  I stepped out and looked around.

  Wang and a member of her team were waiting ten meters away. We’d known that, of course, from monitoring the site, but I feigned surprise anyway and introduced myself.

  “J. Johnson,” I said.

  “Zoe Wang,” she said. “I’ll be conducting the interview, and I’m the one you’d be transporting, if you get the job.” She nodded toward the man with her. “This is Bing Fu; he’s here as security in case you’d been someone else or tried anything.”

  I smiled and shook hands with both of them.

  Wang’s grip was firm and dry.

  Fu’s was limp and moist. He kept his left hand in his pants pocket and leaned forward awkwardly. Assuming he was holding a weapon there, he wasn’t comfortable with it.

  Wang was a woman of average height, about to the top of my shoulders, thin but curvy, with pale, gold-tinged skin, and black hair buzzed into a close-cut stubble on her head. She wore dark blue overalls, and every pocket bulged with something. Her mouth was a bit too wide and her lips a bit too thick for her face, but the combination of them and her large, intent black eyes was compelling. She was somewhere in that vast and, for those with money, unchanging age range from early thirties to seventies. Fu was a shorter, male version of her, thinner but with the same haircut and skin that was slightly more golden in color. He looked to be in his twenties.

  I questioned Fu’s value as added security, but maybe he was all she had available.

  “What does the J. stand for?” Wang asked.

  “Nothing,” I said. “My parents liked the letter and figured I could choose my own first name to suit my mood, even change it from time to time.” If she’d done her homework, which admittedly she hadn’t had much time to do, she knew the answer already from my profile. If she hadn’t and checked later, she’d find only confirmation.

  She smiled. “So what are you going by these days? Or is it just ‘J’?”

  “Jon,” I said, “for a while now.” When you’re picking an alternative identity, sticking with your first name is a good idea, because when anyone calls you by it, you’ll react naturally. Hesitation at responding to a last name is easier to explain among friends or colleagues, because you can always say you’re not used to being addressed so formally. That’s why I’d gone with “Jon Mashem” on Studio. With both Omani and Kang potentially monitoring local data streams for me, though, I didn’t want to risk using my own first name. This approach gave me the best of both worlds.

  “Okay, Jon,” she said. “Why didn’t your profile have any images of you?”

  I shrugged. The answer was because Lobo had omitted them so no facial-recognition search software could find me, but what I said was, “I have no idea. I sent them images of both me and him.” I patted Lobo’s hull. “Someone messed up, I suppose.”

  She nodded. “Speaking of your ship, why don’t you show me around it.”

  She turned left and walked slowly around Lobo.

  I followed and talked as we walked. Fu trailed us.

  “Not a lot to see,” I said, “as you can tell, though that’s by design. He’s—”

  “That’s the second time you’ve called it ‘he,’” she said. “Why is that?”

  “His name is Lobo. More precisely, that’s the name programmed into his AI software and the one that software responds to, so I use that name for all of him.”

  “Okay,” she said. “That’s cute. Please continue.”

  “I am not cute,” Lobo said over the machine frequency, “nor is my name.”

  I ignored him.

  “He’s heavily armored,” I said, “which probably isn’t relevant to you but is useful for some of the more concerned executive clients I’ve had. Nav systems are current and extremely accurate; if there’s space for him, we can put him in it.”

  The logo for my fictional transportation service stretched down both sides. As we rounded his front and turned back toward the open hatch, Wang said, “Passion’s name, image, and the tour logo go on every ship in our little fleet. We’ll pay for application and removal, but carrying the ads is not optional; yours will have to go. Do you have a problem with that?”

  I shook my head. “None at all. Every client wants its logo in view; that’s standard.”

  We reached the hatch.

  “Why do you want the job?” she said.

  “First of all, I need the work,” I said. “That’s reason enough, at least for me. Second, from the checking I’ve been able to do in the short time since I got the call, you guys seem legit, you pay well, you pay on time, and I couldn’t find a single complaint about you from anyone you’d contracted with.”

  “You mean that I couldn’t find any,” Lobo said, again over the machine frequency.

  I ignored him again. His ego bruises easily, and right now we were talking about him in ways sure to annoy him. I’ve always marveled that with so much computing power he still managed to have so many very human flaws.

  Wang nodded. “May we check out the inside?”

  “Of course,” I said. “I should warn that it’s short on luxuries and smaller in there than you might expect, due to all the armor. You can rent anything you want that will fit inside, and we’ll carry it. You take full responsibility, though, for anything that happens to your stuff. Anything that goes wrong with the built-in equipment is my problem.”

  “Of course,” she said. “That’s standard.” She looked inside but did not enter. “Hi, Lobo. Mind if we come in and look around?”

  “Not at all, Ms. Wang,” he said. His voice was lower and softer than the one he normally used with me.

  “We’re all friends on this team,” she said, “so call me Zoe.”

  Why was Lobo always better with women than I am?

  “Please come in, Zoe,” Lobo said.

  I gave her the tour of the areas I’m willing to show: food stores; medtech room, though with most of its probes and equipment withdrawn behind blank walls; the small storage area; the guest sleeping area, a closet-sized space even smaller than my quarters; my quarters; and, finally, the large pilot area up front.

  “You sleep here?” she said.

  “I live here,” I said. “The price is right.”

  “Not a lot of personal stuff.”

  I shrugged. “I’ve never seen much point in collecting things I’d have to lug around. Most of what matters is either in here,” I pointed to my head, “or in data I’ve put in Lobo’s data stores.”
/>   “Not a lot of places to put things, either,” she said. “Or to hide them.”

  “Again, I don’t have any need for a lot of storage space,” I said. I didn’t tell her about Lobo’s ability to open storage areas, or about all the many weapons and artifacts hidden inside him. “As for hiding things, I live alone, Lobo is shut when I’m not in him, and so I have no need to do so. I take it, though, that you’ve had theft issues.”

  “Not from my past drivers,” she said, “but with others, sure. Passion is the kind of celebrity who inspires collectors and who’s the target of a lot of newstainment feeds; dealing with temptation from people like that is part of the job.”

  “You’d be amazed what even some savvy executives will say around drivers and other help,” I said. “It’s as if we were invisible. I’ve heard more than my share of secrets people would pay a lot to learn.” All of that was true, as I learned back when I made my living providing courier services for both people and packages of all types. I didn’t have anything approaching Lobo then. “One leak, though, would be the end of my business. I’ve never had one.”

  We went up front.

  “I’d want to set up my command center in here,” she said. “Is that possible?”

  I’d had Lobo extend two pilot couches. “I need access to the far pilot area when we’re moving.” That wasn’t true, of course, but on lesser craft it would be. “Other times, both of these can compress into the wall, and you can have the space.”

  “I’d also want to sleep in the guest quarters. I stay near my data and other materials.” I must have hesitated too long in responding, because she added, “I know it’s an invasion of your space, but I always live aboard during a show. If you want a room, we’ll pay for one.”

  I shook my head. “You’re welcome to sleep there, but unless you’d object, I’d just as soon stay in my quarters.”

  “Fine with me,” she said. “Fair warning: I make a lot of noise.”

  “Every space here is heavily soundproofed.”

  “Good,” she said. “If we hire you, for as long as we’re paying you, we need to be clear on one key thing.”