He took a moment and peeked into the cop’s prowler, rummaging around for anything that might clue him in on the ongoing search for him. As he studied the dash, he felt a moment of panic: he couldn’t decipher half of what he was looking at. Finally, his brain zeroed in on a flash membrane inset into the steering pad that listed Midwest City locations, most of them highlighted in a fluorescent green glow.
The third location down the list was the Restaurant.
He flicked the listing and the word SEARCHED popped up in red block letters. The cop hadn’t taken the time to DNA lock the screen. Brindos flicked again, this time on the red letters, and a city grid coalesced on the membrane. The Restaurant’s blip snapped into place. Not far away, perhaps safe to return to if Authority had already given it a look.
The sirens suddenly got louder, as if someone had just cranked up the volume on some crappy U-ONE vid broadcast, and he left the prowler and took off at a run across the street in the direction the grid had given him for the Restaurant. He slipped into a narrow back alley, all thoughts about the cop on hold, his own survival now the only matter of importance.
The sun was coming up. Gray sky above, cracked pavement below feet that were not his feet. Tired. When had he last had a regular night’s sleep? Quite a while, if he didn’t count the numerous times he’d been out cold. He slipped through the alley, barely taking notice of the buildings themselves, which looked to be in much the same shape as the rest of the district: rundown, neglected, mostly deserted. Only a little bit of garbage, wrappers and containers for foods and drinks he couldn’t identify, some boxes, cardboard, and plastic, and not a lot else.
Brindos kept moving, sticking to alleys and side streets, and the sirens faded. Finally, some distance. Of course, he had no idea where the hell he was, or how he was going to get out of his genetic Helk suit.
He was hungry. How much did a Helk have to eat to quell his hunger? At least Brindos could go in the Helk section of The Restaurant to eat, but would he actually enjoy the food? What Joseph called the “real thing”?
Goddamn you, Joseph. He slammed his fist into a brick wall as he passed by, knocking a hole in it. He didn’t even slow down. He wasn’t surprised in the least that he could do it. Was it because he was losing his humanity, losing his connection to who Brindos was and truly becoming a Helk? He still didn’t know yet whether all his thoughts were his own, and he was pretty sure a Helk psychiatrist would just end up declaring he should be hauled away to the nearest Helk looney bin.
Brindos moved into another alley, barely aware of his surroundings, but hoping his sense of direction was taking him in the right direction, toward the Restaurant. Thoughts circled like buzzards waiting to claim his soul.
His ozsc.
And then he was at the end of the alley. A dead end. Surrounded by brick on all sides, Brindos knew he had stumbled into a blind alley. A glance to the right revealed it wasn’t exactly a dead end, though. A slim passageway, dark and ominous, looking like the entrance to some forbidden tunnel, was tucked tight against the right angle of the brick walls coming together. He wasn’t sure he could even squeeze into that space. Not sure it was smart to even try, but at the very least, it could turn out to be a decent hiding place if the cops suddenly showed up.
He slipped into the darkness, discovered he had plenty of room to walk, and inched farther into the passageway.
Pitch-black.
Walking with his hands out in front of him, Brindos managed to shuffle along without tripping over anything or bumping into any walls. Soon enough, a glimmer of light appeared in front of him. Emboldened by this, he moved faster, until he nearly fell out of the passageway.
Along a redbrick wall, Brindos saw a few waste containers tucked in tight against a wooden platform. Next to the platform was a door. A yellow door.
Yes. He was outside the Restaurant, near the spot where Tom Knox-who-was-supposedly-Jordan-Dak-the-waiter slammed him against the wall, wondering how Brindos knew him.
The place where he’d blanked out and lost eighteen hours of his life. Hours Joseph had filled in, insinuating Brindos had killed the waiter. Saying he’d helped get Brindos to his hotel, keeping the incriminating evidence to himself. Then Brindos had met Terl Plenko. Then Joseph turned out to be more than he had let on. Brindos’s last image of Joseph had been his haunting smile and his fingertips glowing white.
Two Second Class Helks came through the yellow door. Brindos waited a moment, then moved forward into the dim light. They saw him and raised their stunners.
He needed to remember he was a Helk. Shit, not just a Helk. I am Plenko. He had startled these two Helks, that was all. They had raised their weapons because he’d appeared so suddenly. If he just played a Helk, he’d be fine. If he just played Plenko, he would be even better.
Brindos looked the part, but could he bring off the rest of it? Would the first words he uttered give him away?
The Helk to Brindos’s left was the first to ease his guard. He had on a blue jumpsuit that covered everything but head, hands, and feet. “Terl?” he said, giving Brindos something to work with. “That you? What are you doing here?”
The other Helk’s jumpsuit was red. He lowered his weapon in relief. “Scared us.”
“Sorry,” Brindos said, keeping his voice low. He pointed back toward the dark passageway. “I decided—I mean, I just thought—”
Blue Jumpsuit took a small step forward. “You okay?”
“Sure,” Brindos said. “Just … you know. A walk.”
Blue and Red looked at each other. Then Red said, “Without any clothes?”
Brindos looked down, remembering he was naked. Naked as a Helk could be, considering its leathery skin and massive furry body. A slight flaw in his plan to blend in.
There was distrust in the Helks’ faces when Brindos glanced back at them. “Yeah. About that…”
Blue’s stunner inched upward. “We haven’t seen you for a week. We were told you were in East City.”
“East City,” I said.
“You know. Tower One?” Red said.
“Tower One,” Brindos repeated.
Did he mean the carrier disaster? The Exeter running into the Conduit, ripping out the tower, dragging it, the wire down, and a section of East City destroyed.
“Destroyed,” Brindos added, trying to sound authoritative.
“Well, yeah, we knew that. You were going to assess the damage, see how bad everything was. See if the patterns are compromised, if you could get near enough to check.”
Brindos nodded. “Of course.”
Now Red’s stunner leveled. “Of course? You got in? Patterns lost? Destroyed?”
This was getting tricky. “Destroyed.” Brindos pointed back behind him, realizing he’d made a big mistake coming here. “You know, I’m just going to go back and look for my clothes.”
“Maybe you should come on inside for now,” Red said, waving his stunner a little.
Brindos turned, prepared to run at full Helk speed, fear motivating him to get far away from the place. Red and Blue had him pegged before he’d taken a few steps. The tingling started at his leathery head and permeated his entire body, and as he lost control of his limbs, his fading thought was:
Not again.
Fifteen
Another Transcontinental Conduit.
The one on Temonus had been mysterious enough, as Brindos had figured out. But here on Aryell?
Soon there would be a new Conduit, and maybe the old one would still be usable if repaired—whatever that meant—and two planets had already progressed to the point that they were ready to leave the galactic club, thanks to Plenko’s Movement.
I knew without a doubt that Forno had orchestrated the twists and turns needed to get me to this place now, standing a short distance from a technological marvel and a conspiracy bigger than Terl Plenko’s Movement.
“Forno,” I said, “just what the hell is going on?”
Forno took several Helk-sized steps away from hi
s flier and looked out over the Flatlands at the tower that would soon host the thin filament of a Conduit said to control the weather. He stood tall, his Helk frame massive in front of me, and he didn’t seem to be at all concerned about being visible here on this small hill overlooking the expanse of the Flatland, with the afternoon wearing on.
When he didn’t answer, I said, “Honestly. Is there really that big a need to control the weather here?”
He shook his head. “Not really.”
I eyed the workers down there at the near tower. “And who are they?”
“You ever wonder why they built the first Conduit on Temonus where they did?” he asked. “In the cities? East, Midwest, West?”
“I’ve got nothing. Answer my question.”
He nodded at the workers. He hadn’t looked at me since he’d stepped away from the flier. “They’re just Aryellians doing their jobs. Someone tells them to build this engineering behemoth, and off they go.”
“Out here in the Flatlands.”
“Back on Temonus, they built the Conduit right in the middle of everything,” Forno said.
“They?” I said.
“Before the Movement started gaining notoriety.”
“You mean the Science Consortium.”
Tem Forno finally looked back at me. “Yes.”
“Are you saying the Consortium has enough pull to organize a second one of these, so soon? I hadn’t heard or seen anything in NIO circles about this second one.”
Forno laughed. Or burped. I wasn’t sure which, but the volume and grating intensity of it said the same thing. He was amused. “Of course you didn’t,” he said. He pointed at the tower. “You think Plenko has the resources to do that? He’s been on the run for years, ducking in here, sliding in there, little hit and runs, coaxing out Union planes and Arks to chase him as if it were a game—”
“What about Coral? The Movement base there, and Coral’s destruction. Planet Ribon.”
“It’s not Movement.”
“Dorie Senall. Jennifer Lisle.”
“Not Movement.”
“Then it’s the NIO, like you warned me about.”
“They did set you up.”
I thought about my silent code card, no agency activity popping up on it at all, and wondered. “Who are you, really?”
“Told you. Tem Forno.”
“Are you Movement?”
“No.”
“Consortium?”
“No.”
I took a step back. The Flatlands seemed a little hotter. I could’ve used some of that shielding Forno had on his flier. I wondered how those workers down there at the tower could stand it.
Forno looked straight into my eyes. Actually he had to look down quite a bit, but the effect was the same. He held my gaze for several seconds. “I’m Gray.”
Gray. I took another step back. “Who?”
I flashed back to my run-in with “Gray” at Floor 13. The person in the shadows who told me about the ultra thin level. The set up. Tony Koch and Terl Plenko being the same person. Aliases. But not aliases. The Science Consortium, Tim James, NIO involvement …
“It was you?” Keep stepping back, Dave, I told myself. I stepped. “You’re Gray? You left the privacy visor? You shot me.”
“Stunned you,” Forno said.
“You son of a bitch!”
“I got you out of there. That’s all that mattered. I took a flight ahead of you since I didn’t have to work as hard to lose anyone.”
“What the hell? Why Gray? Why not tell me you were Forno?”
“Trust issues.” Forno stood like a colossus, barely moving. Intimidating. Then he shook his head. “Gray is an accurate name, however.”
“How so?”
“I worked for the Kenn. Helk intelligence.”
“You’re an agent?”
“Was.”
It came to me as I remembered the indoctrination the NIO had given me about the other intelligence groups. “Kenn. It means Gray. In Helk.”
Forno nodded. “The Kenn are famous for doing whatever needs be done to insure the safety of the Helks. So we straddle the line sometimes. I mostly did undercover work, infiltrating the larger, more troublesome districts on Helkunntanas, working the underground. RuBy sniffers, data forgers, you name it.”
“Why are you here? Why me? If the Kenn knows something—”
Forno shook his head. “They’re compromised just like the NIO. I can’t trust the Kenn, and you can’t trust the NIO.”
“Why can I trust you then, if you’re Kenn?”
“I helped you. I’m not your enemy.”
“Who is, then? The Consortium?”
He shrugged. “Sort of.”
“What do you mean—”
“Director James.”
“He’s the enemy?”
“Sort of.”
“For god’s sake—”
“James and the Consortium.”
Sounded like some free-pop band. “You mentioned the NIO funding the Consortium. Something about the Plenko commission order coming from Timothy James. And by the way, just how in the hell did you get a hold of a privacy visor and get into the NIO basement?”
“NIO has secrets, the Kenn has secrets. And I had reason to use our secrets to access yours, trust me. Uh, sorry about the visor not giving you anything else. That’s as far as I’ve been able to dig into the NIO basement. The rest of what I know has come from … direct involvement.”
“James didn’t make the order to fund them?”
“The NIO could get the cash, but someone else made the order. I think the Consortium did.”
“Through James.”
“Through James who’s not James.”
My thoughts whirled. I walked past Forno, toward the tower, hand to my head, then spun around, walked back, toward the flier, and regained my original spot.
Forno said, “Is that helping?”
“Shut up.”
“Fine.”
“No, don’t shut up,” I said. “Listen and see if this is right. Tony Koch isn’t Plenko’s right-hand man, he is Plenko. But no, it’s an alias. But no, he didn’t look anything like him. My partner Brindos said something about crap going on where he was. Tom Knox not being Tom Knox—”
“I was going to get to both you and your partner, get all this explained earlier. But then you sent Brindos to Temonus.”
“Sure. Following leads—”
“Brindos is in a lot of trouble,” Forno said. “You’ve got to get to him, because I think he knows something the Consortium doesn’t want him to know. They may be making an example of him.”
I stared at him.
“I understand this is confusing, Crowell. And there’s more to tell. But we need to get back to the flier and get out of here. I have another place I have to take you. Another puzzle piece. Then you’ll know as much as I do. The rest of the mystery? That I can’t figure out. I’m going to need your help.”
“My help? Forno, I don’t know anything about this mess. Or you.”
“You were inside the NIO. You were a part of it, a contractor. When the NIO set you up, they did it because you knew something, or they did it because of someone you know. Something you saw. Everything’s been thrown in your path. It’s true you may not have known anything then—or you don’t know you know something—but you may know something now.”
I found myself nodding, but not because I understood him. Or believed him. I just wanted him to make me understand what the fuck was going on.
“I can’t trust anyone else in the Kenn or the NIO, not even the provincial and Union governments. It became clear to me that I needed to bring you in on this, if you weren’t already compromised.”
“You’ve decided I’m not.”
“Yes. I wouldn’t take you to this next place only to show you the sights.”
I followed him back to the flier. As we clambered inside, he handed me my blaster. Having it back did not get rid of my uneasiness. My brain tried to
wrap itself around all that Forno had said so far.
Then I remembered Cara. “Cara’s involved,” I said, as if it had already been proven true.
“You suspected so, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but I have no idea how.”
Forno lowered the shielding and hit the ignition. The flier’s engines fired up almost immediately. “I only know that she’s associated with Kristen, the woman she worked for at the Flaming Sea. I think she might have something Kristen gave to her. A key. That’s what I was looking for at the Flaming Sea.”
My eyebrows went up. “Tony Koch said something about a key before he died.”
The flier had taken off now, and Forno shot a quick glance my way. “Koch? Dead?”
“Cara and I had a run-in with him. He kept saying we had the key, that Plenko would find me. But I don’t know what the damn key is. Do you?”
“No clue. Cara didn’t have any idea?”
“Didn’t seem to.”
He pursed his lips. The fleshy parts of them were bigger than my hand.
“This key,” I said. “It opens something? But they don’t know what it is or what it does?”
“That about covers it.”
“And you don’t know what it is.”
“No clue.”
“Nothing?”
He shook his head. “You’ve been thrown into this mess, Plenko is looking for you, so you’ve got to help me figure it out.”
“Yeah, everything’s so clear now.”
“So what do you think?” Forno asked.
“No clue.”
Sixteen
Awake again, greeted by a soft, reddish light. Brindos was sprawled on a hard floor, inside somewhere. A strong odor actually made him wince.
Four or five times coming up out of consciousness in the past day and a half. Another few times and he’d be a pro at this.
Plenko. Me. Still getting used to it. Where was he? Who was he? Brindos the Helk. Shit, was he now thinking like a Helk?
No. Under the surface, he was Alan Brindos. He remembered the last words out in the alley, about the Conduit being attacked again, the main tower “compromised.” He knew who he worked for, he knew his partner’s name, and he knew what had happened to his own body.
The Ultra Thin Man Page 14
