The Ultra Thin Man

by Patrick Swenson

  Those who had left Earth for the worlds of the Union dreamed of coming back one day, but I just wanted a break. I would not stay on Earth forever; the NIO contract wouldn’t last forever, and Mom would understand. My heart yearned for a different planet.

  Aryell. Older than Temonus by a little, but small, and more of a backwater planet, a tourist spot. Home of the Flaming Sea and the best snow in the Union. I’d had just one assignment there, three years ago, just before Alan and I decided to contract with the NIO. I met Cara there. I sort of fell in love with her, but never really told her.

  When the NIO pulled me back to New York, I left her behind.

  The moment I entered the NIO Headquarters, an ENT accosted me. “Shit,” I mumbled, shying away from the flashing niche-holo. I was supposed to dish these out, not receive them.

  I swiped at it with my hand and read the message from NIO Assistant Director Aaron Bardsley for a briefing. Well, this was going to be fun. Bardsley was quite the straight-laced boss, and didn’t put up with my jokes and good-natured ribbing. He would grill me about my recent decisions regarding the Movement, I figured, passing his thoughts up the datawell to Director James, but I had a few items I wanted to discuss with him as well, including the discovery of some key DataNet files about Terl Plenko.

  On my floor, one from the top, I made my way through the maze of cubicles to the offices behind them. Mary Blair, the assistant director’s secretary, showed me the way, just in case I’d forgotten, and after I slipped through the double doors, she closed them behind me.

  Bardsley’s suite made his office a home away from home, suitable for week-long stays if the need arose, as it often did. During my first few years with the NIO, we had very little contact, only bumping into each other for NIO briefings, but he was my number-one contact these days.

  Timothy James, however, was a different story. I saw him rarely. I didn’t like him much. Most agents didn’t. We sometimes called him Tim Jim, or Timmy Jimmy. He had moved up quickly in the NIO ranks—too quickly for my liking. But President Nguyen liked him, and to be fair, James had proved more than competent.

  He’d been director for seven years, appointed during Union President Richard Nguyen’s third term in office.

  Because everything seemed to be about the Movement these days, I saw Bardsley a lot here in his office suite. Spacious, most definitely, with sleeping quarters and bathroom smart-rigged into the floor plan, available with a push of a button. In the corner of the office next to the entryway, a bar and lounge area stood at the ready. The window behind his desk, which took up the entire back wall, looked out over the New York skyline. The thick black carpet felt like a sponge as I crossed the room to the director’s desk.

  I wondered what James’s suite must look like.

  Bardsley greeted me with a nod and an outstretched hand. He’d turned sixty a week before but he looked older, his gray hair sparse, his dark brown eyes all business, no pleasure. His thin frame was tightly wrapped in a custom-tailored black suit jacket that made him look like an undertaker. Matched the carpet, anyway. I wasn’t dressed for a funeral, but thoughts of my own demise came to mind when I saw Bardsley’s face, which looked like the front holo of the Times, all bad news, but controlled in neat columns. Without a word, he motioned me to a chair next to his desk. A see-through cube on the front edge of the desk contained a blue and gold fluidic mass that budded, twisted, and elongated through the nano-slurry inside that controlled it.

  “You sent Brindos to Temonus,” he said.

  I pulled my attention from the cube and looked at him. So much for pleasantries. It sounded like an accusation, and I wondered where he would go with this. “I did.”

  He leaned back and crossed his arms. “For Plenko?”

  “For Koch, actually,” I said, getting the gist of it now. A little light shed on why I was here. “He probably won’t turn up, so I told Alan to take some vacation time.”

  Bardsley stared at me, his eyes hard obsidian. He was thinking hard about something else, not Alan Brindos and where I sent him.

  “Why did you go over my head and contact President Nguyen about Coral?”

  That wasn’t what I expected him to ask, but I had a snap answer for him. “I decided the severity of the situation demanded quick action, and you were not available.”

  “I wasn’t?”

  “No, you were out of the building.”

  “Did you try to call me? Or—God forbid you’d ever think of this—the director?”

  A lump formed in my throat and I scratched at the stubble on my chin that suddenly decided to sweat and itch. “No, sir. Again, I felt the need to—”

  He waved off my response, apparently satisfied, but I knew better. “Director’s been hard enough to get a hold of lately. But was I unavailable when you decided to send Brindos to Temonus?”

  I didn’t answer. Sure, I’d sent Alan without telling James, but then again, it was my right as Movement Ops Director. Why was he so concerned about this?

  Why did I feel put off?

  Bardsley smiled. “I’m sure you felt it was necessary to act quickly there too?”

  It wasn’t even the same thing, but I kept quiet about that. Instead, I brought up those DataNet files. “I found some information on Plenko while prepping files on Koch for Alan’s code card. Seems Director James knew where Plenko was and commissioned agents to tail him a few months ago.” And you didn’t tell your Ops Director about it, I added silently.

  Bardsley looked away, shuffled some papers. I clenched my teeth, then looked down at the carpet. It wasn’t any fun not being able to crack a joke.

  “We did put a tail on him,” Bardsley said, frowning, though from the way he said it, he might as well have said, “Just what the hell are you doing?”

  Good question. Hell, I didn’t know that I was really doing anything.

  “Plenko’s done plenty of world hopping,” Bardsley said. “He’s Transworld Transport’s best customer. We found names on passenger lists three or four dozen times during the past year that later turned out to be aliases.”

  I shook my head. “The tail didn’t last long because agents lost him a few months ago. No help from TWT. Why the hell is he flying TWT instead of his own private shuttles?”

  “Sliding in unnoticed as a passenger on authorized TWT flights is quite the trick,” Bardsley said with a frown.

  “How could TWT miss him? I could name a dozen worlds Plenko’s been to in the past year alone, compliments of TWT, and that’s not counting the ones rumors say he visited.”

  “Like Coral.”

  He was fishing now, trying to get me to say something about the debacle at Coral that he didn’t already know. Bardsley had sent Jennifer Lisle there a month earlier to check out the leads he’d sniffed out, and Alan found the proof. Like I knew anything else that would make him feel better about losing Ribon, and the moon that had caused the devastation.

  The loss of life on Coral and Ribon had sent shivers down the spine of the Union. As large as Ribon was, it would never recover fully from the disaster. The pure callousness of Plenko’s interference there was inexcusable and most of the provincial world governments, and their citizens, had denounced the attacks. The economic downturn that had crippled the Exchange on every world had caused widespread panic. Now, just a short while later, cries for Terl Plenko’s head had lessened, and the voices in favor of his primary objective—independence—had gained momentum.

  I said, “Whether Plenko visited Coral in person or not, I don’t know, but he was involved in it.”

  “So you’re sniffing around Temonus for the same reasons,” Bardsley said. “Leads. Hunches.”

  Oh, yeah, now I remembered what I was doing. Detective work. “Yes, sir.”

  He tapped lightly on his desk a moment, seemingly staring at the wall behind me. “Where’s this leading?”

  I decided just to let it come out. I leaned forward in my chair. “Director James cancelled the tail, but Plenko was seen a few days
ago on Temonus, in Midwest City.”

  Bardsley pursed his lips. “Curious. Koch and Plenko on Temonus. Your best guess. Why would Plenko be on Temonus?”

  I had no definitive answer for him, but I made my guess. “The Movement’s activities here on Earth have become a low priority. They’ve relocated their base of operations. Earth could be a front, a way to establish Plenko’s name and give him power to gather recruits. This woman Alan checked out on Ribon, the one who preferred to fall one hundred floors to her death than surrender to the assault team? She was smuggling workers past customs to Coral, recruiting for the Movement.”

  “Dorie Senall.”

  “You knew her?”

  He shook his head. “But I read the reports. I have to finish this up. What do you want me to do?”

  I stood and backed away from the desk a little, still facing Bardsley. Some space away from him, some height over him. “Alan Brindos is looking for Tony Koch, of course, but I’d like to give the matter of Terl Plenko priority. If there’s a remote possibility of the Movement’s ringleader being there—”

  “Yes, well, at least you’re asking this time,” Bardsley said, interrupting me. “Have you heard from Brindos?”

  “Not yet.”

  “He better be careful. Plenko is extremely dangerous, especially if cornered.”

  No kidding. Plenko, a First Clan Helk, was big enough to take on several of NIO’s best men without breaking a sweat. Tony Koch was a Helk too, though born and raised on Earth. Helks often took human names for business purposes, but Plenko had kept his Helk name.

  “I want you to stay close, Crowell,” he said, “and in my sights. Nguyen wants you close. Brindos is on his own, and he can report in as necessary.”

  “If he runs into trouble, a transport can jump his way,” I said, hinting.

  “I doubt it would do any good. A transport would take a few days through the jump slot, and the director is not recommending the president send out any Arks without probable cause.” He stood abruptly. “Let me know what you find out.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “The Movement clearly has an interest in Temonus. Rumors of Temonus’s secession from the Union of Worlds are increasing. Certain Temonus senators are trying to bring it to a vote. If it doesn’t happen, then what? The Movement’s terrorist atrocities on Coral and Ribon prove they could just as easily do something drastic to provoke Temonus to break away.”

  Something less drastic, I hoped, than destroying the world. Blowing up the planets the Movement wanted to win over to their cause didn’t exactly make sense. I paused, trying to decide how to phrase my next question to the director. So far this morning, Bardsley had been relaxed, even during my reports about Koch and Plenko. I had considered not bringing up the subject about sending Alan to Temonus, because I knew how anything dealing with the Movement made his blood pressure soar, and I was obviously in enough hot water already.

  “Sir,” I began, “has President Nguyen been notified of Plenko’s disappearance? Union assault planes are chasing his shadow all over the city.”

  Bardsley nodded, but now his voice took on a reproving tone. “We’ll inform the president, but remember, just because Plenko’s not around doesn’t mean the Movement’s gone with him.”

  Four

  Crowell’s information pointed Alan Brindos to Midwest City, so he spent three days there chasing the Koch lead until it dried up like a trickle in the desert.

  He stepped outside the Orion Hotel to watch the sun go down. A farewell ribbon of fire glowed orange on the western horizon, and the low dome of the sky gave up its midnight blue and changed to black. A hollow hum that modulated pitch every few seconds made him look up. The Transcontinental Conduit was above him somewhere, and maybe that’s what the humming was coming from. He had checked and there were no tours, as he’d thought. The Orion’s gift shop had some T-shirts though. The humming got him thinking about the weather and Crowell’s note about how the damn thing worked. It was impressive, he had to admit.

  He kept staring into the cold night sky. Truth to tell, anything could be causing that noise. Anything. Brindos felt his calm, peaceful mood slipping away as he went back inside.

  Joseph, the hotel concierge, gave him a nod as he walked past him into the lobby. Right now Joseph knew Brindos by an alias, Dexter Roberts. I’m good at being someone other than myself, he thought. His whole family had been killed during a freak flash flood in New Mexico when he was eight years old. He was visiting his granddad in Phoenix when it happened. Granddad passed away three years later, and Brindos was shuttled back and forth between foster homes for the next half-dozen years. He had so many last names he had almost forgotten his real one.

  Brindos acknowledged Joseph with a wave. Should he order room service or go out to eat? Such were the demands lately on his mental powers. He snagged a newspaper flashroll of the Midwest City Tribune from the front desk and headed for a bank of ten elevators that fanned out across the far side of the lobby. Their mirrored surfaces reflected a panoramic view of the Orion’s interior, his approaching image a shivery spot of black swimming in a chrome sea. The elevator bank’s ability to morph his image so profoundly startled him every time he approached. He chose elevator number three—or maybe it chose him.

  An ad slogan for a product he couldn’t even remember went through his head: You don’t have to believe in the subliminal. It believes in you.

  The soft pulse of the lounge act off the main lobby fell abruptly silent when the elevator swallowed Brindos whole. A slight g-force hit him in the knees, signaling the ascent. Circles of light burst quickly up the panel in front of him, illuminating the number of each floor that dropped away. There were no buttons to press. Sensors read the room number from the key in his pocket, or he could have used voice commands to go to a floor other than his own. Some of the more ancient elevators back on Earth still had the buttons anyway, to give you the illusion that you had at least an iota of control over your life.

  By the time evening had fallen on his fourth day in Midwest City, Brindos had decided Crowell had been right about Temonus. Dead end on Koch. Looked like he’d be able to enjoy a little vacation time after all. Then it would be back to the safety of his desk in New York.

  He retired early to his room and turned the vid on with the sound turned down. A sunset blazed on the wall screen, and a bloodred streak cast a hellish light over everything. Superimposed in the lower right of the screen were the words LIVE: NEAR EAST CITY. He plopped down in a chair, but tensed and moved to the edge of the seat as he recognized the vid images.

  A ship had crashed. He twisted the newspaper flashroll tighter in his hand, the red blinking node reminding him he hadn’t unrolled it yet. An inferno filled the screen, then the camera angle shifted slightly, and the glowing remnants of an interstellar cruiser came into view. The surrounding plain burned out of control; pieces of fuselage were scattered far into the distance. He saw a few bodies too, but the network did a good job keeping the auto-cam focused elsewhere. Shivering, he felt the magnitude of the disaster even through the vid screen.

  The auto-cam robot, impervious to the heat, provided the striking images as it sailed over the burning landscape, quickly approaching the carrier. It slipped into one of the burning sections searching for carnage, just heat moving like liquid before the lens. Special enhancement straightened out the shimmering forms, but there was still little to see, everything twisted beyond recognition. The auto-cam pivoted, peering through a gaping rent in the hull. Off in the distance, a piece of the wreckage as big as a city block burned.

  Brindos leaned back and rubbed his temples, trying to take it all in.

  Something moved in the flames. He saw it even as the auto-cam picked up on it, enhancing that area of the screen. It was a servo-robot, coming into focus as the auto-cam moved in. The large machine lumbered erratically through the melting fuselage. Had it been aboard the cruiser before the crash? It left the fuselage and continued its jerky waltz across
the open plain, fire and smoke trickling from its metal skin. Brindos moved forward in his chair again, fascinated by the obviously malfunctioning servo-robot. Its sensor panel filled the screen as the auto-cam zoomed in on it. Gauges and probes, all twisted and black, resembled a stoic cartoon face concealing the madness coursing through its heat-fused circuits. Then the screen went white, a flash, dimming down to the soft arc of airborne debris, a shadow quickly moving toward the auto-cam. Brindos instinctively jerked back as the screen went blank.

  He sat limp in his chair, staring at static. The newspaper slipped to the floor, and when he picked it up and unlocked it with his thumb, the node flashed green, and the thin membrane shimmered to life with the front page image of the Tribune. The headline, in its tall bold-faced type, announced “The Movement Is Here.”

  Brindos picked up the paper, thumbed the upper right-hand corner, and the membrane came out of low-power mode and brightened, transforming instantly to sharp-edged black-and-white text and full-color images. He looked closer at the lead article, flicked it, pulled, and stretched the flash for a larger image. What the headline really said was “The Moment Is Here.” A senator from Northern Ghal, Bill Ralton, had made a little speech the previous morning. He had boldly suggested that the colony petition the Union of Worlds for independence. A holo-recording of the senator speaking from the floor in the House ran continuously, looping every five seconds: Ralton, raising his arm in a gesture of leadership, clenching his fist, bringing it down, gripping the sides of the podium with both hands, leaning closer to the camera. Apparently, Senator Ralton impressed the other representatives, for quite a number of them came forward to endorse the proposal. Perhaps the headline should have read “The Movement Is Here.”

  Somewhere between the televised disaster and the Tribune headline, any thoughts of a post-mission, relaxing holiday disappeared. He looked at the vid again, which still showed static. Did no one at the station know what had happened? He turned it off and stared at the blank wall screen for a long time. He mulled over all he knew about the Movement and Temonus, which wasn’t much, and he could make no sense out of any of it.