The sun had vanished behind the far side of the cloud cylinder and the temperature was dropping as day began its surrender to night when we passed by an out of order snack dispenser. Nothing feels as useless as a broken machine, and even good security teams often ignore the more routine devices, so I stopped beside it, tuned into the machine frequency, and subvocalized, "It's rough, isn't it?"
The response was both rapid and a bit stunned. "Excuse me?" it said. "Are you speaking to me? And if so, how?"
"Surely you've encountered other humans who can chat with you?" I said. "I'd assumed you were a modern system." Machines large and small are highly competitive egomaniacs, their surplus intelligence circuits and software focused narrowly on their tasks. I've yet to meet one with the programming to cope with even the most basic of interrogation techniques.
They will almost always lie to save face.
"Of course I have," it said, "and I am as up to date as any dispenser you'll ever meet."
"Which must make it particularly rough," I said, "that you're not able to work."
"You have no idea," it said. "Service is my life, and I excel at it. My self-repair abilities, however, are limited, and so I must wait for someone to come fix me."
"The repair requires a human? Can't they just send a patch?"
"Oh, I could handle anything soft; I wouldn't bother anyone if that were the problem. No, alas, it is hardware, pure and simple: A bent delivery chute, courtesy of a little deviant of a child shoving a shoe up me earlier today while his brainless parents gazed on in drooling admiration."
"Surely the repair team will come quickly," I said. "Your importance is obvious by your position, which is clearly a vital one. As essential as you are, they must have an entrance to the underground complex practically next to you."
"While it's obvious that you are a discerning and intelligent man," it said, "in this one point I am afraid you may be wrong. Though my systems don't have access to the plans for the main complex, based on my one previous mechanical problem and their slow response time in addressing this one, either the nearest entrance is far away, or they choose to delay repairs until the evening."
So much for that idea. I couldn't get the data from the available machines, and I couldn't spot the hatches myself, so it was time to give up this approach and try another one.
"I wish you a speedy repair," I said to the dispenser. Aloud to Pri, I said, "I'm beat. How about we call it a day?"
Though she was clearly tired, she also obviously didn't want to stop. To her credit, though, she hadn't argued with me for some time, and she didn't choose this moment to resume the practice.
"Fine by me," she said. "Let's go home."
She didn't speak again until we were back in Lobo, which was good; the less we said in public, the better. As soon as he closed the door he'd opened, however, she started. "What did you see that I missed?"
I ignored her, walked to the front, and said aloud to Lobo, "Take us to a safe orbit." I then plopped into a pilot couch, looked at her—she had, of course, followed me—and braced myself for what was to come. "Nothing. I couldn't spot a single hatch or even a hint of where the entrances to the underground complex might be, though it's a safe bet there's one near each major exhibit." I breathed slowly in through my nose, calming myself for the attack that always came when you didn't give a client the answer she wanted.
Pri sat on the edge of the other couch, leaned her head into her hands, scratched furiously at her hair, and said, so softly I could barely hear her, "Damn. I was so hoping." She shook her head and looked up at me. "Thanks for trying."
I stared at her in silence for several seconds, caught completely unprepared by her niceness. Finally, more through reflex than thought, I said, "Thank you."
She rubbed her eyes and sat up straight. "So, what do we do next?"
I'd been pondering that very question all the way from the broken dispenser back to Lobo. I'd hoped to be able to slip into the compound, that Wonder Island's need to be a successful tourist attraction might bring with it some obvious security holes, but we'd seen nothing of the sort. Even if Lobo could get through the facility's defenses initially, either he'd lose to greater strength while waiting for me to find Wei, or in the course of winning he'd attract so much attention from Heaven's government and its EC friends that we'd never get out of this solar system. I'd come up with only two possible answers, and neither of them made me happy.
"First," I said, "we definitely get some more of that chocolate gelato."
When she didn't smile and only stared harder at me, I raised my hands in surrender. "Okay, fine, no more attempts to cheer you up. Here's where we stand." I took a deep breath. "We can't try to break into the place because we don't know where to begin. Consequently, whatever we do is going to take some time, potentially a lot of time, but definitely an amount we can't control. Right?"
I didn't want to point out to her the implications for Joachim; from the tightness of her face, she already understood them.
She nodded slightly. "Yes."
"So, we have two remaining ways to get Wei. One is when he's outside the island. He'll have guards, but at least we'll have a chance of finding him quickly. To know when he's out, your people will have to watch every landing point they can manage and yell the moment they spot him. When we're done talking, you have to call them and tell them to set up surveillance teams at as many of those locations as they can manage."
"They're already looking for him," Pri said, "so that shouldn't be hard. What's the other way into that damn underground complex?"
I smiled, spread my arms, and said, "I'll have to get them to invite me."
Chapter 14
Pri stared at me as if I'd lost all contact with reality.
"She's not going to ask," Lobo said aloud, "so I will: How do you propose to wrangle an invitation into their underground sanctum?"
"By getting a job there," I said.
"Maybe Shurkan didn't fully brief me," Pri said, "but I didn't think bioengineering was your specialty. Just how much training in that area do you have?"
"None," I said. "That's not the kind of job I want."
Pri shook her head and stared at me, clearly exasperated.
"When you think about the Wonder Island staff," I said, "you think about Wei and his team. Right?"
She nodded.
"That's fine, because they're the ones you're after, but what do you think most of the people who work there do?"
She considered the question for a few seconds. "Make the place run."
"Exactly!" I said. "They do any labor the machines can't, deal with the tourists and VIPs who require personal handling, plan events, work security, and do all the other jobs that still require humans."
"They're going to run a background check on anyone who applies to work there," she said, "so they'll find out who you are."
I nodded my agreement. "I'm counting on it. They'll learn the same things you and the CC discovered: That I've done courier work, that I served with the Saw, and, if they're well connected, that I've ruffled more than a few feathers. When they check for me locally, they'll find the apartment I'm renting, the additional details Lobo and I will plant—"
She interrupted me. "And they'll check you against their security videos and learn you were there today. They'll know you were checking it out."
"Yes," I said, "they will, which I'll explain was because I hoped to land a job there. They'll also find that I recently lost the title to Lobo and that I failed to impress and ultimately was dumped by the girlfriend I'd taken there." I smiled at her. "That would be you."
"So we're over already?" she said, also smiling. "Wow, that was quick."
Before I could respond, Lobo said, "I've checked their public postings, and though in the past they've listed security guard openings, they have none now."
"That's the big weakness of this approach," I said. "It could take a long time. Low-end staff and security people tend not to stick around for long anywhere,
so I'm confident I'll get a shot at some point, but I can't know when." Pri opened her mouth to speak, but I held up my hand and continued. "Which is why we have to hope your Freepeople colleagues can work their connections, conduct surveillance on multiple exits from the island, and find out where Wei goes on his days off."
"Are you sure he has days off?" Pri said.
"No," I said, "I'm not, but it's extremely likely. Anyone trapped in any fixed environment craves time away from that space. He's in charge, so he's likely to be able to indulge that craving. We need your people to find out where he goes when he gets out."
"Then let's not waste any more time," Pri said. "I'll call them."
I stood and headed for my quarters. "You talk to them from here. I'll work with Lobo on the background data."
"Now you're trusting me to be alone with them?" she said.
I chuckled, turned to face her, and from the way she narrowed her eyes I realized too late that she hadn't been joking and had hoped our relationship had advanced to that point. "No," I said. "I'm too paranoid to do that. Lobo will record the conversation for me, and he'll stop it if he decides you're wandering at all out of line or off the topic."
"So you trust this machine more than you trust me?"
"I should hope he does," Lobo said, indignation quite obvious in his tone.
"I do," I said to both of them. "Pri, you and I have shared one and a half good days, but before that time you conned me. Lobo and I have a couple of years of history, and he's saved my life more than once." I smiled at her. "Ask me again when this is over, when we've succeeded, and maybe we'll both have good reasons to trust each other more.
"For now, though, contact your people. Lobo and I will make sure the local data streams contain the right information about me, we'll try to move ahead on that apartment so it looks like I'm planning to stay here, and we'll file my job application. Then we'll sleep. After that, all we can do is hope for the best."
I don't dream much, and when I do, the experience is rarely pleasant. The visions that snapped me awake several times that night maintained that unpleasant tradition. Images of Jennie boarding the ship that would take her, my sister and first friend, away from me—a scene I'd never witnessed but had imagined so many times it was now more vivid than many of my real memories—morphed into slow-motion video streams of faceless, white-suited jailers strapping Joachim onto medbeds poised to inject him. Joachim then mutated into Benny's strange form, the leathery stomach and flipper-like arms of my fellow test subject replacing the normal torso I'd imagined for Pri's son. They'd needed special restraints for Benny. When the nanobot injections hit your system, they burned at first, then turned into screaming muscle cramps and created the sensation of creatures crawling under your skin. If you weren't fully strapped down, you'd do anything to get them out of you. Benny's odd structure had let him pull his arms free from the first set of cuffs they'd used on him, and he'd torn big gashes in his chest before they were able to restrain him more effectively.
I'd watched that scene on a monitor from my own cell on Aggro. I remembered going into the same room to receive the same injections that had so tormented Benny, but still the imagined picture of Jennie vanishing was more vivid than any real memory. Blocking out such painful recollections undoubtedly served me well and was a natural human defense against the unthinkable, but it still bothered me that I couldn't recall them fully, as if the pain could not have been real if I was unable to invoke it again in full.
The third time a variation of this Jennie-Joachim-Benny sequence assaulted me, I sat up in my cot, sweat dampening my entire body, my mouth clamped tight against a scream, and I knew I wouldn't sleep any more that night. I'd spent six restless hours in bed, so I'd indulged myself enough. I got up and focused on working out. I started with stretching and proceeded through cycles of body-weight resistance movements, each one flowing into the next, no break between individual exercises and only half a minute between cycles, until I felt cleansed of the haunting dreams and my body was deliciously sore.
Lobo interrupted me as I was eating a bowl of rice, a variant of which you could get on every planet I'd ever visited, and some bits of a local, meaty white fish.
"We have a new approach option," he said over the machine frequency.
"Weren't you going to tell me the rest of the story of your relationship with Wei?" I said. "What did you call it?"
"More complex," Lobo said, "and, yes, I can and will go through it with you at some point, but not right now."
"Right now would be a good time," I said, "to resume it."
Lobo's sigh was audible. "No," he said, "it would not."
"Why?" I was tiring of his stalling tactics.
Suli knocked on the door to my quarters and said, "Jon! Jon! I have good news."
"That's why," Lobo said, "as I would have explained if you'd stopped asking me questions."
It was my turn to sigh. "Sorry about that. Let her in."
I sat on my cot as the door snicked open and Suli stepped inside.
"We know where Wei goes!" Suli said. She paused and thought for a moment. "Well, we know one of the places he goes, but given what it is, he probably goes there often."
"Your people tracked him?"
"Obviously," she said. "In a moment sufficiently ironic that they felt obliged to rub my nose in it, while we were touring the island, Wei was in town."
"Learning the territory is never a waste," I said, though I wasn't sure that would prove to be true in this case. "Where does Wei go?" Before she could answer, I realized the obvious and added, "And why didn't your surveillance team grab him?"
"To answer the second question first, they're not set up to do that kind of thing, they're locals, and . . ."
She paused so long I prompted her.
"And what?"
"And he travels in a three-car group, all the cars are armored, and we can't know his path in advance; he took different routes coming and going from the city."
"That's still good news," I said. "We now have multiple possible snatch points."
"And guards are fair targets," Lobo said aloud.
"What does he mean?" Pri said.
"You can speak to me directly," Lobo said. "I don't need his sweatiness there to bless my every utterance. What I meant is that Mr. Moral Convenience doesn't like incurring collateral damage, but he seems to consider that by signing on as guards those people know the risks they're taking and so are fair targets. I like targets."
"And you don't care about hurting innocent people?" Pri said. "Don't you have some kind of programming to stop you from damaging people?"
"Hello!" Lobo said. "Have you looked at me? I'm built to fight. It's what I do. While I'll certainly admit to the possession of a moral framework too complex for discussion in the middle of a mission, once we agree to take a job I let that agreement guide my actions and do what's necessary. Unlike some people."
"Enough," I said. If I let Lobo get rolling, he could be at it for hours. I focused on Pri. "Lobo is right in noting that I don't like injuring civilians, and he's also correct that I don't consider guards to be civilians. That said, we," I paused and glanced around, "all of us, including Lobo, will do our best to minimize casualties of any type. Right?"
"Of course," Lobo said. "You must admit, however, that they seem frequently to be unavoidable in what we do, and you do keep getting us involved in these situations."
I opened my mouth to speak but stopped before I said anything and invited more argument. As usual, Lobo had his basic facts right but ignored many extenuating factors. Getting into a discussion of them would do us no good and also expose more of my past to Pri than I was comfortable sharing.
"Let's move on," I said, "because we have a lot to do with the new information available to us." I faced Pri. "Where does Wei go in Entreat?"
"To see Andrea Matahi," Pri said. She clearly expected some sort of reaction from me.
"Who's that," I said, "and where does she live?"
&nbs
p; That wasn't the response she'd anticipated. After a few seconds of staring at me, she said, "You don't know who she is?"
"I can provide you a full briefing of the public data," Lobo said. "Though I should warn you in advance that I cannot find any photos of her; she must have friends in media and hacking circles, because someone has sanitized and scrubbed most of the data that's out there, if not all of it. Her address is one of the many pieces of information that's not available."
What was with these two? Everything I said or did ended up leading us onto detours. "No," I said, "I don't know anything about her." To try to get us back on point, I added, "Remember: I'm not from around here."
That seemed to placate Pri, but only a bit. "Matahi is famous by reputation in Entreat, probably on all of Heaven, as a courtesan and on rare occasions public companion to some of the most powerful men and women on the planet for the last century or so."
"That's great," I said, "because it'll make it easy for me to see what we'll be up against when Wei visits her. I'll just hire her."
Pri shook her head. "That's not how it works, or, at least, that's not how I've heard she operates."
Overthrowing Heaven-ARC Page 11
