by Lee Bond
Denying him access, access that truly wouldn’t cost anyone anything … it was just stupid. Anything he did now would be unmistakably public, and that would for damned sure cause boatloads of problems.
Garth took a deep breath. “I provided Sa Herrig with a number of details concerning The Box that could not come from any source other than direct, personal contact over an extended period of time, Sa OverSecretary. Furthermore, the circumstances surrounding my own introduction into Trinity’s society are …”
“Are independently validated from fourteen individual requests for the data from an equal number of sources in Trinityspace and also incredibly well-forged.” Terrance smiled at the Offworlder’s discomfort. “So well-forged, in fact, that I am inclined to believe that for the first time in five thousand years, the Trinity AI has decided to deal with us directly instead of through the usual, more … discrete channels. You see, over the past two and a half thousand years, agents from a number of systems have attempted to breach our borders, and the trail back to Trinityspace has always gone no further than a systemically local decision. In your case, though, the data is perfect; I’ve seen footage of your ‘interrogation’ and again, independent analysis says that either you are in fact thirty thousand years old or Trinity has decided it wants our Box so badly It has concocted an incredibly devious scheme to lay Its ‘hands’ on it. As for the data you provided, we made highly detailed recordings of The Box and information similar to what you gave Sa Herrig available to an individual several years ago. If this man did not give this information directly to you, then you simply stole it, looking to exploit our people. To be clear: either you are still in the employ of Trinity as a subversive element or you are looking to sell what your services to the AI after the fact.” Terrance grinned. “Either way, you fit a profile I require.”
“I don’t know what to say.” Garth admitted forlornly, sagging into the chair. If OverSecretary Terrance wasn’t looking for someone to assassinate Chairwoman Doans outright, he was definitely in the market for some kind of mayhem.
“There is nothing to say, Sa Garth Nickels. The evidence that you are here to perform some act of sabotage for the Trinity AI is overwhelmingly indisputable. You have no doubt realized that you still live because there is something you can do for me. In exchange, your legal request for citizenship will pass without hindrance. You see? I am nothing if not reasonable.”
Garth’s options were very clear. If he tried to escape, he’d be gone like the Dodo inside of five minutes. Assuming he got free by clicking his magical boots together, getting out wouldn’t do him a lot of good. As the number two honcho in Latelyspace, the OverSecretary could make his life miserable with a few phone calls.
Garth didn’t relish the idea of being chased down the street by a marauding band of twelve-foot tall ogres that made Zurich -one of his old Services buddies- look like a toddler. To make it worse, the ultradense infosphere on Hospitalis would have his mug pasted onto every prote from Timbuktu to Shangri-La.
It wasn’t even as simple as agreeing to the man’s demands and then pulling a fast one. He’d get off-planet, but from there… the Q-Tunnel was ‘loyal’ to the government insofar as safety protocols demanded, so there was no escape out-system. There was also that three-mile long transpo ship hanging around in deep space like a fat whale stuffed to the gills with bloodthirsty fighter pilots. Running simply could not work.
On the other hand, working for the OverSec could give him access to some type of Intelligence … and he could use whatever covert status they assigned him to allay anyone’s suspicions. Anything the OverSecretary wanted done would for damn sure be like kicking over an anthill, but when it came right down to it, getting into the ship was the most important thing. Having to dodge the occasional angry mob would be well worth the hassle if working with –at least on paper- the OverSecretary took him one step closer to his goal.
“What is it you want me to do?” Garth asked after a moment’s hesitation. Conning a politician was always tricky because some of the bastards were sharp as tacks over stuff like that. It wasn’t until the OverSecretary relaxed for a microsecond that Garth felt confident he’d snowed the man. He’d gambled on Terrance desires to paint Doans in a bad light were more important than trying to catch a suspected Trinity Agent with his pants down and had won.
Something was finally going right!
“For now, nothing.” OverSecretary Terrance rested his hands loosely on the table. “The situation we are waiting for hasn’t shown. It may never present itself at all, in which case you’ll either attempt to go back to your original mission parameters or choose to leave Latelyspace in one piece. I am certain a man of your intelligence will make the correct choice should that eventuality … arise.”
Garth appreciated the OverSecretary’s warning. He’d’ve been shocked to the marrow if the politician hadn’t threatened him. “When do I become a citizen?”
“The moment you return to the hotel, your proteus will receive confirmation of your changed status. It’s provisional, meaning you won’t be accorded the rights and privileges of a full citizen, but it will prevent you from being accosted by local law enforcement should you enter areas of Hospitalis traditionally … ahhh, ‘Offworlder free’.” Terrance smiled, genuinely this time, pleased the meeting had gone the right way. “There will be a packet of information concerning your new rights.”
“And?” Garth quirked an eyebrow. When Terrance didn’t respond, Garth pressed the point. The opportunity to work under the noses of government agencies was too powerful a lure to ignore, so if he was going to get the permission, he had to strike now, while the iron was hot. “If I could be doing something … covert … for you, I think it would be in your best interests if I’m permitted to operate unimpeded in certain areas. I mean, if I got to move like the wind and stay hidden in plain sight, that is. Better I become accustomed to the Latelian way of operating before it’s necessary, if you follow my drift here, Sa OverSecretary.”
“Your proteus has already been upgraded to military class, giving you access to some few areas of intelligence as well as software and hardware not available to the general population.” Terrance raised a finger in warning. “I do not give this to you lightly, Sa Garth. Even though your machine will have only restricted access, the data and functions at your command are still of a sensitive nature. I’ve done this as a show of faith. I am well aware of your ability to wear two faces while in a mirror. You would do well to use the proteus sparingly, and to live with the reality that as long as you are in Latelyspace, you no longer work for the Trinity AI.”
“Well,” Garth said, puffing out a breath he’d been holding, “that sounds wonderful.”
OverSecretary Terrance rose. “One more thing, Sa Garth. I’ve informed The Game people that they’re to step back from you a bit. I understand your handler was a bit overzealous the other day. It’s obvious from your background you have little need to train for the competition or to waste your time with the tedious chore of being led around like a child. You’ve already shown your willingness to behave. I don’t think there’s any need to worry. Do you?”
Nonplussed, Garth shook his head. The OverSecretary left the room through the same door he’d come in through. There was more going on here than he could rightly see and it irked the crap out of him.
Intel. The longer he ran around without a fucking clue what he was doing, the more likely it became that something drastically important to his health and wellbeing was going to be missed in the rush. It wasn’t impossible that he’d misread Terrance’s intentions and the politician’s reactions because even under the best circumstances, understanding what the hell was going on beneath the surface was damned difficult. For all Garth knew, Terrance had done the once-over on him instead of the other way around.
Mulling over the risks of pushing Jimmy to hurry his contacts along, Garth waited patiently for the agents to return with his new proteus.
xxx
Following another
unspoken command, the pilot of the hovercar slowed to a halt in roughly the same place they’d occupied about an hour ago. The duronium hood was removed. “Sa Nickels.”
“Uhuh.” Garth peered out the window. Two hundred feet below, a small crowd of contestants from the hotel was gathering a safe distance away from the supposed point of impact and was eagerly awaiting some kind of splash. True to the spirit of the group, Garth saw bets being laid, which cheered him in a sort of nihilistic way.
“The OverSecretary has placed an inordinate amount of trust in you. Trust, I must admit I do not share, especially in light of your training.”
“Uhuh.” Wishing he could get in on the action, Garth wondered what the odds were on his doing a face plant in the concrete.
“Pay attention, Sa Nickels.” The agent snapped. “Your life depends on it.”
Again, working through telepathy or from a playbook –in itself disturbing, because how many people do you need to drop from an aircar before you write up the right way to do it-, they launched upwards at a dizzying speed, leveling out when they’d gone up another four hundred feet.
“I can’t claim to understand the OverSecretary’s reasons, but he is a good man who wants the best for our people. In that, I support him fully. Now. Have you been given a clear course of action yet?”
“No. Not yet.” The frightening thing about loyalty, Garth knew, was that even maniacs and lunatics were sufficiently charismatic to trick normally sane people into believing the craziest shit. Terrance didn’t seem to have any of the perquisite ticks and howling-at-the-moon kind of problems, but his poor judgment in hiring an ex-Special Services saboteur to do his dirty work showed a startling lack of wisdom. Therefore, any gomer willing to work for such a man and endorse his philosophies needed to have an MRI scan ASAP.
“Excellent.” The agent nodded. “Your new prote is a modified military unit. Be careful whom you let near it; even though it is a physical duplicate of the one you recently bought, there are organizations working against the OverSecretary who can identify it for what it is through casual software surveillance. A foolish choice in trust will put your life in immediate danger. At the OverSecretary’s command, you have access to some of our more sophisticated software. This has been done so that when the time comes, you’ll be able to respond appropriately and minimize collateral damage and media saturation; our world is complex and something that may seem innocuous at the time could be your downfall. It was not given to you so that you can compile data Trinity will later use to exploit us. Are we clear?”
“Crystal.” Garth looked at his proteus. The workmanship was flawless; he’d been wearing it for fifteen minutes and hadn’t once thought to check for differences. Looking at it now, he doubted Sa Turuin would notice.
“Your provisional status as a citizen can be revoked at any time. Your proteus has been auto-configured to alert local law enforcement of your status so they won’t harass you needlessly. Additionally, you now have a miniscule amount of covert protection. It won’t do much but keep you from being arrested for minor –and I mean nothing greater than jaywalking or littering- infractions of the law. Should you fall under enemy fire or other dire straits, rest assured that everything will play out for the better. React appropriately, but under no circumstances initiate anything.” The still as yet unnamed agent paused in his warning to catch Garth’s eye. “Are you a smart man, Sa Nickels?”
“The smartest.” Garth eyed the agent flatly, blue eyes glittering.
The agent smiled like a hungry shark. “Then it won’t shock you to learn that your new proteus is laced with enough explosive to turn you into a red smear on the ceiling if you do anything we don’t like. And we will know instantly.”
“I kinda figured that out a while ago, thanks.” Garth shrugged nonchalantly. It’s what he’d do if the situation was reversed. “What am I, an idiot? Please.”
“Again,” the agent continued, “since you possess an abundance of intelligence, it goes without saying that trying to defuse the bombs will result in premature detonation.”
“What if I wanna take a bath or a shower or something?” Garth asked idly. They probably thought the idea of wearing a bomb was a freaky thing. He’d worn a bomb for a month, once. A small one, but things that go boom go boom. “Is it rigged to blow up if I take it off?”
“You must remain within three feet of the proteus at all times, Sa Nickels, otherwise yes. During Game bouts, you will be under direct surveillance, so it will be safe if you pass beyond the perimeter.”
“All right, okay, that sounds good.” Garth smiled. “Do you have any idea what the OverSecretary is going to ask me to do?”
The agent shrugged as the hovercar began its descent, this time at a safe speed. “It could be anything at all, Sa Nickels. Anything at all. Just consider yourself lucky you weren’t killed outright. If I were the sort of person to believe in miracles, I’d say your arrival here and now was just such a thing. Do the OverSecretary the courtesy of proving him correct; if you fail, or do anything to sully his name, the things that will happen to you will become legendary, even in Trinity.”
The crowd, eager to see someone take a swan dive from six hundred meters, was very disappointed when Garth climbed out of the hovercar. To make matters worse, he wasn’t disfigured, crying, or bleeding from anywhere. They booed and hissed fractiously.
They dispersed with sullen resentment at being denied the chance to see something fantastically disgusting. As he made his way through the lobby towards the elevators, Garth caught sight of Si Mijomi’s preternaturally hostile shrew face. He winked salaciously at her before hopping onto the elevator.
Her shriek of poorly contained rage sustained him all the way up to his room.
The Mysterious Lady Ha, and Who in the Hell is Turuin, Really?
Garth put a call through to Sa Herrig the moment he exited the elevator. With one legal claim denied and the other rubber stamped, the lawyer/banker must be frenzied; with the bulk of legal proceedings involving the government handled by very sophisticated law-avatars, the intervention of an actual, living human being was probably akin to Divine Intervention. When that representative worked for OverSecretary Terrance … Herrig, who’d filed his client’s claim of ownership only after couching the phrasing carefully enough that it would be too dry and tedious for a person to even consider reading, had to be freaking out.
“Sa Garth!” Herrig’s voice squeaked out of the proteus. He was frantic. “Thank goodness! I’ve been trying to locate you for hours now! Your case has been …”
Garth interrupted Sa Herrig midsentence. Down at the other end of the hall, lounging like a malignant tumor, was the burly IndoRussian Injiri’d pointed out earlier that morning. He didn’t look pleased. “Hey, Herrig, let me call you back, all right?” He thumbed the ‘end’ button and waited.
Marko straightened and stood in the middle of the hallway. Marko came close to matching the awesome size of God soldier. He pointed at Garth. “You killed my brother.”
“Oh?” Garth said, subtly shifting. The hallway wasn’t very big, and Marko was going to take up most of the available space, so he needed to be as flexible as possible. “You guys don’t look related.”
“Brothers of the Iron Skull.” Marko grated, his voice full of loathing. Learning that Garth had been snatched up by agents had been upsetting, but now the bastard was back and unharmed, he felt better. It was going to be fun, dismantling the little bastard.
“Oh.” Garth almost ruined the moment by laughing. The Iron Skull was a pitifully small mercenary organization that more often than not found their ‘soldiers’ routed by local police officers. They weren’t even nasty enough to gain the attention of Glass Hammer, and those guys were punks too. Hell, they weren’t even multi-systemic any longer. “Well, shit, fella, I was trying to get a room, and your brother was all up in my face. His fault.”
Marko let loose with a bellow of rage and charged, hands grasping for the head or neck. Garth dropped to his kne
es just as Marko got close enough to grab him with his huge mitts, clamped a hand on the IndoRussians testicles and heaved with all his might. Screams of rage became shrieks of agony as Marko slammed into the thick elevator doors, leaving a skull shaped dent. The IndoRussian picked himself up off the floor, spat out a tooth and came at Garth again, this time practicing a little caution; rather than charging like an idiot bull, he approached warily, weaving his hands back and forth.
Garth let Marko move him down the hall, watching the rhythm. The hairy giant’s favored art was probably grappling or throwing, neither of which would do him a lot of good in the hallway. Sheer fluke had sent Marko into the elevator doors instead of the ceiling; his intention had been to knock the creep out by conking him on the top of that dome and go on with the rest of his day unimpeded but the fucker’d wobbled in mid-air, throwing off the toss.
With the initial engagement over and done with, there was nothing for it but to have a quick and dirty dance with the big IndoRussian. When Garth was sure Marko’s next attack strategy, he stopped moving. The beast moved.
Marko grinned as he stepped closer, tingling in anticipation of the kill. He lashed out with a speed he knew confused most opponents; because he was so big, they always made the mistake of thinking he wasn’t fast. His thick fingers snatched the side of Garth’s head in a vise-like grip and he shouted incoherently, pulling the soon-to-be dead man in for the crush.
Wondering if he was ever going to find a chef or cook with sufficient scope and vision to see the dream of a real hamburger or properly made pizza pie, Garth allowed himself to be drawn closer into the sweaty, stinky grasp. The pressure on the right side of his head wasn’t enough to hurt on its own, but as soon as Marko started trying to squeeze the life out of him, it’d get uncomfortable. When it looked like Marko was fully committed to the old bear hug cliché, Garth started moving.
