The Ultra Thin Man

by Patrick Swenson

  What kind of urgent information could an unregistered possibly have for me?

  I got dressed—suit, jacket, blaster—everything I’d throw on when going to work on a normal day. I spent the next thirty minutes charging my finger capacitors, even though I had never used them before. I hadn’t wanted them, but they were forced upon me, government-issue. A mandatory surgical procedure had given me the ability to discharge a hell of a shock, one cap in each pointer finger, enough to put someone out. They might come in handy after all. I had to make allowances for this whole thing being a setup, even though I had no idea where to look for Floor 13.

  Floor 13 or not, the NIO building was where I needed to go. So much for the Temonus whiskey. So much for my day off.

  On my way to the NIO offices I checked my code card, but nothing new turned up from the global data searches I’d set up earlier to research Conduit day-to-day operations. I’d asked fellow agents to take a peek around as well, see if I was missing something obvious. Nothing.

  A few blocks from the NIO building I remembered Floor 13.

  It came as a memory, or maybe a flash of insight. I don’t know why, but I peered to my right, down an alley. In the distance was a building that could’ve taken up an entire city block. I must have passed that alley a hundred times on that very same street, maybe even looked down that alley a dozen times, but why would I have noticed a distant, somewhat run-down building, with FLOOR 13 stamped near its roof line in big block letters?

  I ran most of the way. Ten minutes later, I got there, and as I stared at the Floor 13 letters on the side of the building I realized the place had been some kind of dance club. I had a vague recollection about it. Floor 13. Abandoned now, looked like, as many buildings were. A narrow building, thirteen floors.

  I expected the double-door entrance to be locked, chained, or both, but it was wide open. Christ. I drew the blaster from my suit jacket.

  I slid inside and the elevator was right in front of me. Just a smidgen of light seeped into the room from the double doors, but I could tell the whole bottom floor was abandoned. A lot of garbage littered the floor, but I couldn’t tell what most of it was in the low light.

  Twelve more floors in this building, but I doubted there was such a thing as a grand tour. At this point I was only interested in number thirteen.

  I called the elevator and stood poised, blaster raised and ready. The doors opened right away and I saw nothing in the elevator’s darkness. I walked in. The 1 button cast the only light inside, and it gave just enough light to pick out the 13 button. I pushed it and the elevator rose. I expected a noisy ride, neglected machinery and all that, but it ran smooth and quiet.

  Okay. I’d figured out Floor 13. Now what about this goddamn Gray?

  The elevator slowed to a stop and the doors opened. My blaster still raised, I stepped out into silence.

  The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. No one was in sight. Feeling terribly exposed, I swept my blaster side to side, up, back down, but I couldn’t see anything. No tables, chairs, shelves, no carpet, not even a disco ball. The place was nearly dark except for the glow of a few safety spots creating scattered pools of light. This didn’t look like my kind of place. What kind of music had they played here?

  I wondered why it had closed, and how long it had been closed.

  The elevator door clicked shut behind me. I inched toward the nearest pool of light, my footsteps echoing in the open space.

  “That’s close enough,” a deep voice said from somewhere in front of me. I stopped a few steps away from the pool of light, surprised by the loudness of the words. The voice sounded low and guttural, almost like a growl, but I couldn’t see him.

  “Gray?” My voice echoed off the bare walls. “A little more light on the subject would be nice. How do you expect me to dance—”

  “Shut up, Crowell,” came the voice. “Drop the blaster.”

  Got my name right, so at least I was in the right place. I waited, but just for a moment. I edged a little closer to the light, testing him. If he said something else, I might be able to pinpoint his location, get off a wild shot. Not good odds though.

  I heard the click of a weapon readied.

  I stopped, held the blaster above my head a moment, then crouched down and placed it on the floor.

  “Kick it into the light,” the gruff voice said.

  I straightened and did so, my nerves all jumbled up now. “Gray? Is that your name?” I looked around slowly, but still couldn’t make out where he might be. “What am I doing here?”

  “I’m warning you about your own agency.”

  “The NIO. Really.”

  “You need to get away from here.”

  “I don’t—”

  “I’ve been inside the NIO DataNet,” the voice said.

  “You can’t have been in the DataNet unless you’re NIO. Are you?”

  “I’ve had access to a DataNet level deep in the NIO basement. You know what that is, of course.”

  I did know. And it was impossible. “Even I don’t have clearance for that. There’s no way—”

  “The ultra thin level is not for anyone’s eyes except the top NIO hierarchy.”

  “Ultra thin level. You’re kidding, right?”

  “You and Alan Brindos are being traced.”

  My stomach flipped a few times, and I took a moment to look around me. Was this really the only other person here in this abandoned dance club?

  “Let me see you. Who are you?”

  “I’m Gray. Your life is in danger. The NIO cannot be trusted. Because of the Movement, which you are investigating, increased funding has gone to the NIO and to the Science Consortium.”

  “Science Consortium. Five Union scientists. I’d say that’s common knowledge.”

  “You sent Brindos to Temonus,” Gray said, seemingly ignoring me. “You should not have.”

  “It was my right as—”

  “You told him to investigate the Transcontinental Conduit.”

  I wondered how he knew all this. “And?”

  “A lot of the funding is tied to it.”

  “The Science Consortium designed it. Do you read National Geographic?”

  “It is so much bigger than that.”

  “In what way?”

  “Temonus. Ribon. Coral. Aryell. Something bigger than the Movement.”

  “Bigger than—” I snorted. Laughed. But in my mind, I thought of Cara. She was on Aryell, and now this Gray was telling me it was involved in something bigger than the Movement.

  “The NIO has traces on Plenko and his aliases,” Gray said. “Tony Koch, Tom Knox, Tam Chinkno. This commission came from Director Timothy James.”

  Tony Koch wasn’t Plenko’s right-hand man? He was a Plenko alias? “Koch, an alias? Tom Knox too? Knox was supposedly an alias for Tony Koch.”

  I was familiar enough, too, with the Chinkno alias. These Helk names gave me a headache.

  Gray said, “Depends on how you look at it. There’s also a trace on Dorie Senall.”

  “A trace on a dead woman? The NIO must have recalled that trace by now. If she hadn’t taken her high dive from her Venasaille tower, her name would mean little.”

  “You’re wrong about that.”

  “And a trace on me. And Brindos.”

  “Yes.”

  I tried to follow what he was saying. Did he really know anything, or was he himself some sort of Movement crackpot?

  “Why should I trust anything you say?” I asked. “Do you even know what an NIO trace involves?”

  “With an NIO trace on you, at the very least, a tracking program has wormed into your code card and interfaced with an NIO monitoring cobweb. The only way to counteract a cobweb of that variety is jump slot travel.”

  All true. How did he know all this?

  “This is why you must leave, and leave now,” he said. “The NIO will arrest you on suspicion of treason when you return to your office.”

  I glared in the direction of Gra
y’s voice.

  “I’m going to bet you have a way to confirm the trace,” he said.

  I did. What Timothy James or Aaron Bardsley didn’t know was that Brindos had done some reprogramming of our code cards. Tampering with them was enough to get us fired from the NIO itself, but we had managed to install various subroutines that could give us information other agents might not have access to.

  I ran one of our own tracking programs, one of the most illegal applications available on the Net. It hadn’t occurred to either Brindos or me to look, but now that I did, it became obvious within minutes that Gray was telling the truth. A monitoring cobweb had uploaded onto my code card, and not too long ago. A few days.

  “Helk snot,” I whispered. I could read between the lines. I was in trouble, as Gray was telling me, and that trouble was coming from the NIO higher-ups.

  “You shouldn’t have sent Brindos to Temonus,” Gray said. “Now you’re apart and it’s not going to be easy for you two.”

  “Please—how do you know all this?”

  “I can’t tell you more. There’s a chance I’ve said too much. I honestly don’t know where your loyalties lie. Or Brindos’s.”

  “Our loyalties? What the hell—”

  “You’ll have to chance going to Aryell on your own.”

  “Aryell. Why Aryell?” Although I wanted nothing more than to go to Aryell. To see Cara.

  “You can communicate with Brindos safely once you’ve arrived. If you send something before then, it will need strict coding. I imagine you have other … unique … applications on your code card that will allow you to do that.”

  “You can’t just tell me where—”

  “You have to go to Aryell.”

  “Why won’t you let me see you? What’s the big mystery?”

  “I have to shoot you now.”

  Shit. I didn’t hesitate. I didn’t know this Gray, so it wasn’t hard to let self-preservation and reflexes kick in. I turned, ran into the darkness, and dove for the ground. A weapon discharged, and a flash hit the wall in front of me, lighting the floor a split second, long enough for Gray to find me and discharge the weapon again. An energy pulse hit me square in the back.

  The elevator appeared for a brief moment in the light, and I had a glimpse of its doors opening as the pain raced through me, the muscles in my body seizing up into tight knots. Then I blacked out.

  I woke and immediately wished for a hangover. Better to suffer that than the needles piercing my brain and the muscle spasms moving up and down my quivering body.

  Why the hell had Gray warned me before shooting?

  I sat up and tried to shake the fog from my head. I scanned the room and found I had been left where I had fallen, room still dark but for the safety lights, no other movement around me.

  But something was different.

  In the circle of light on the floor nearest to me lay a privacy visor, the telltale silver mask glistening.

  An NIO privacy visor, a sensitive piece of equipment that just didn’t get passed around the office.

  A blinking green light on its side signaled a connection to the DataNet. A moment later I thought to check for my blaster and code card. Gray had put the blaster back in my suit jacket. A check of my hands told me my finger caps still had power. I pulled out the code card, and a red bubble pulsed like a beating heart on the screen.

  Gray had fried the close-ops comm unit. So much for trying to contact anyone in the nearby NIO building. He didn’t trust me, and now he wanted to see what I’d do, not being able to contact the NIO, was that it?

  The time display running in the bottom corner of the code card told me I’d been out cold ten minutes. I assumed Gray had taken the elevator and left.

  Why had he warned me, then shot me? Why leave me with my weapons and a visor connected to the DataNet? I bent down and picked up the visor and thought a moment. No one had ever died or been seriously injured tapping into a privacy visor. Still, I shivered, feeling myself unravel a little more. I could call the elevator again, wait for it, take the visor to my office. Or straight to Bardsley. Or James. But suddenly I wasn’t sure how safe my office would be.

  A tracking cobweb, he’d said. A trace on us by the same organization I worked for.

  I took a deep breath and placed the mask over my eyes. It was light in weight, translucent, and flexible. Like a blindfold, the privacy visor blocked out the light as its edges sealed and conformed to my head. This wasn’t my visor, but they were one-size-fits-all. The screen shimmered to life. An already loaded DataNet page appeared in front of my eyes. Gray had managed an anonymous login.

  It contained an order from Timothy James for my arrest.

  Gray—if that was who I was really dealing with—had led me this far. Did the NIO have ties to the Movement and Temonus politics? They had an interest in it, but did it go deeper? The Transcontinental Conduit tied in somehow too. Someone—probably James—had authorized the extra funding to the Science Consortium’s Conduit research after the thing was built. Why?

  I had virtually no access to any of this sensitive information, this ultra thin level, whatever the hell that was.

  We’d been set up. The goddamn NIO was waiting to sacrifice Alan goat and Dave goat. Could I explain the NIO’s involvement with the Movement? Not that I knew how that could be done. Or why.

  Who was James answering to? President Nguyen? Did it go up that high? Gray had led me to this spot and had visored into sensitive DataNet files. Known all the right passwords to get into the NIO basement.

  As I stood there pondering all this, the visor powered off, obviously on some sort of strict timer. My efforts to power it back up were unsuccessful. I flung it away from me and did a quick search of the abandoned floor. No other clues. Gray had done his one good deed and left.

  I moved to the elevator and palmed the CALL button. I watched the dim red circles above the door flash on and off, from floor one, and I counted down as the numbers did. For all I knew, the privacy visor had its own tracking system built into it, and agents were in that elevator, searching for me.

  I readied my blaster. Finally, the thirteen lit up, and the elevator door opened.

  Empty.

  I sighed in relief, double-checked for peace of mind, then got in. It was my day off after all, so I didn’t feel the least bit obliged to check in at the NIO. Agents were waiting to arrest me. I ordered the elevator to the first floor, and the doors closed.

  I needed to let Alan know of my discovery, but I couldn’t risk using my code card anywhere in Earth’s solar system. Gray was right. The NIO couldn’t monitor code card activity on other Union worlds because of the jump slots, which fried any cobweb hooked to a tracking system, even with a programmed worm forcing the issue. Alan would be safe messaging me with his code card once I got to Aryell. It dawned on me now why James had felt the need to question my decision to send Alan to Temonus, through Bardsley. For two reasons, actually. His monitoring cobweb wouldn’t work there, and Alan might stumble into something on Temonus he wasn’t supposed to stumble into.

  Things had been so much easier in Seattle, running a private detective business that didn’t do any interesting business. Sure, once in a while I got the privilege to get dirt on an unfaithful partner, or track an unregistered alien, or search for a missing person.

  Contracting for the NIO had led me down a new path, and I was still learning the ins and outs of a more strenuous career. I hoped I learned fast enough.

  The elevator doors opened up on the first floor and I half expected to see an armed security team waiting for me, but the floor was deserted. I walked out of the elevator, then out of Floor 13. I put as much distance between me and the building as fast as possible.

  Fifteen minutes later, since the code card’s messaging was being traced, I sent Alan the only possible communication I could risk: a lasergram sent from the New York Universal Telegram Station on Fourth to Midwest City on Temonus, Orion Hotel, strictly coded. Deciphering it would be Alan�
�s problem. I hoped he remembered how to do a crossword puzzle.

  I told him Plenko and Koch were the same Helk, we were being set up by the NIO, and that I would contact him once I arrived at our favorite backwater planet. I didn’t specify, but he would know I meant Aryell.

  Alan and I stopped at Aryell for a few months during our year-long stint chasing Baren Rieser, a data forger from Seattle the police department had tried and failed to bring to justice for nearly a decade. We had chased him halfway around the Union before losing him, although we suspected he’d holed up somewhere on Helkunntanas.

  That’s how we met Cara Landry, a receptionist at the Flaming Sea Tavern, a local pub known for its high-priced sex workers. We didn’t indulge in the ladies, but that’s where Cara taught us the Flaming Limbo. That was three years earlier, before the NIO handed me my Movement commission.

  Like a reoccurring dream, Cara appeared and disappeared from my memory when I least expected it, and each time I awoke, I told myself I would go back to her.

  Now was a good time.

  I took five different auto-cabs and two shuttles to get to Minneapolis. I set my code card up with an alternate identity I’d uploaded years ago. Agents weren’t supposed to do that without registering them, but we did it all the time. All I had to do was flash my card, say NIO and “Neil Ryan,” pass the back of the card over their scanner, and I got a free ride. They’d bill the NIO later, of course, but the code card scans, while seemingly set to bring up Neil Ryan, would register a name I’d uploaded on the sly, that of Thomas Nelson, a journeyman agent I knew only by name, practically a kid, with less than a year’s experience. I picked up a suitcase, clothes, and some necessities at a small shop in the spaceport, then purchased a ticket to Aryell. Thomas Nelson would have some explaining to do about his purchases and his flight plans today.

  I waited impatiently for the drop shuttle to arrive. Had I managed to elude any NIO pursuit? If agents had been sent after me, and managed to keep up during my little jaunt, I’d give them all a bonus myself if I ever got back to New York.