The Ultra Thin Man

by Patrick Swenson

  Five other Ultras self-glowed to death, followed by antimatter blasts that obliterated large sections of population centers. An Ultra in the Kenn, an Ultra in the MSA, an Ultra on each world of the Union.

  As far as we could tell, all the Ultras were gone.

  The Thin Men created by the Transcontinental Conduit—built by the Science Consortium, run by Plenko’s Movement, technology provided by the Ultras—had not disappeared. But they’d obviously been left behind. On their own, without the Ultras to guide them, the copies were not especially difficult to corner. Many turned themselves in. Detailed examinations of the copies offered up no evidence about the Ultras either. Most of the copies had been arrested and were being held indefinitely. A few copies died from complications of the copy process, as had happened to Brindos. Although in the overall scheme of things the number of created copies was minimal, a good number of them had escaped detection and were living among the general population, and many believed they could still do the Union harm somehow, particularly if they teamed up with criminal factions.

  The five original members of the Science Consortium had been killed by the Ultras after they had built the first Conduit and the technology behind it was secure. The copies of the Consortium members were among the first to be rooted out and arrested. The Lorway copy from the vault, however, had evaded authorities. President Richard Nguyen ordered a special task force made up of a number of scientists from the eight worlds to study the infrastructure of the remnants of the Conduit towers, but self-destruct mechanisms inside them had melted beyond recognition anything resembling alien technology. No chances were taken with the downed mortaline wire on Temonus, however, and it was destroyed. Shards, bits and pieces, as well as sculptures and other art pieces containing mortaline, were commandeered and secured in undisclosed locations for study by those President Nguyen called the most trustworthy of scientists.

  I was nervous about this, but the scraps of mortaline that survived, or remained undiscovered, would never be enough to bring back the Ultra’s Thin Man plot. Not that anyone would allow a Conduit to pop up somewhere claiming to be a new weather device: the Union government quickly banned the use of weather control technology on any planet.

  The tent city, New Venasaille, was dismantled. Its RuBy-addicted inhabitants were given as much help as possible coming off the drug, but unfortunately, a majority of them died. It was never discovered how so much RuBy ended up at New Venasaille in the first place, but rumors pointed toward several of the underground cartels that controlled the larger districts on Helkunntanas. The Union government outlawed RuBy on all planets of the Union except for Helkunntanas, where it was manufactured. The Helk government wouldn’t budge on this, but they promised to crack down on the trade of RuBy to the other planets.

  In an ironic twist of fate, after the NIO and Temonus Authority finished combing through the wreckage of the Exeter and Tower One of the Conduit, investigators gathered enough evidence to prove that Lorway, the Memor from the Science Consortium, had sabotaged the ship. Perhaps during some moment of clarity while working with the Ultras, she realized she needed some insurance. Perhaps she felt doubt about her role. Whatever the reason, she programmed the servo-robot to sabotage the Exeter if anything happened to her. The carrier’s usual run took it back and forth between Solan Station and East City, and a rather simple, but hard to detect, DNA-locked telemetry signal in the servo-robot’s biomemory activated upon her death, sending the Exeter along its final path into the Conduit wire.

  Joseph Paul Sando, the Orion Hotel concierge, retired and left Temonus to go back to Detroit. I met him there one weekend, and took him to a baseball game at one of the local high schools. I bought us a couple of hot dogs, even though Joseph craved a good juicy gabobilek.

  Paul Melok finished his run of Stickman with issue 39, which boasted the final confrontation between Stickman and his archenemy Terl Plenko. He added many of the details I sent to him, including the addition of Plenko’s evil master, a nefarious alien Stickman killed. The alien’s body burned and its ashes secured forever in a DNA-locked vault. No one but Stickman could ever open it. He was helped at a very key moment by a certain private detective from Seattle.

  Melok decided to pull the plug on his business, took the money he had, and went into teaching art and graphic design at a local school. I got a free enhanced flashroll copy of issue 39 signed by Melok and the artist, Tad Anthony, and a little later, Melok sent me a framed cover with a holo-animation of Stickman in peril among the ruins of Ribon.

  The new director of the NIO, Aaron Bardsley, asked that I head up a unit created especially to study the Ultras, even though we knew squat about them. At the end of it all, what had we really learned? Not who they really were, or where they came from. Not even why they had done it. Dorie told the NIO the drivel she had overheard from Plenko in the shuttle before I killed him. I passed on the conversations Plenko had with me to Bardsley, and let them worry about it. We gained some super tech, but much of it was unusable. What we did know was that their silent invasion had caused a massive loss of life. The Coral Moon disaster on Ribon, the damage to East City when the Conduit came down, the RuBy-addicted refugees at New Venasaille, and the deaths of the Ultras themselves, their antimatter cores killing thousands.

  I refused the NIO contract. I’d lost my best friend and partner. I lost Cara. I didn’t want anything to do with anything remotely associated with Ultras. Bardsley let me out of my contract early. I packed my bags and headed back to Seattle with a nice little bonus from the NIO and the government for my part in stopping the Ultra invasion. It included an antique Rolex watch I put on my wrist immediately, awed by its craftsmanship. I sat and listened to its ticking for hours at a time.

  Jennifer Lisle made a complete recovery from the wounds she received at Heron Station, but she favored her left leg even more. Unlike me, she said yes to the special Ultra unit, and was promoted to Special Ops Director. It put her in line to succeed new NIO Assistant Director Steven Hardy.

  I opened up my private eye business in Seattle again. Found an office downtown near the Pioneer District, on the top floor of an old building that used to house an art gallery on the ground level. Most of the rooms above the gallery were rented out as artist studios. The place needed a lot of work, but it was spacious, and I’d be able to use the back half as living quarters. I wasn’t sure how well I’d do without Alan around, but I had a few new ideas percolating that might bring me a lot of business.

  I took care of the funeral arrangements for Brindos, since he had no family, and a priest from one of the local missions performed a brief ceremony while Dorie, Forno and I attended. I took his cremated remains to one of my favorite out-of-the-way spots, south of the city to a tiny little lake that used to have, at most, a handful of multimillion dollar homes circling it until 2095, when the last few of the homes were boarded up. They were all bulldozed to the ground a few years after that.

  Throwing the ashes to the wind, I watched them float out over the lake. “See you on the other side, friend,” I said.

  Dorie showed up at my place in the morning a few days later, while I was trying to put up a jury-rigged wall to separate the office from the living quarters of the studio. I let it drop and it caught my toe.

  I held back a curse, then smiled, thoroughly embarrassed.

  “I’m coming to say good-bye,” she said.

  I nodded, knowing this was coming. “You’re off to Ribon?”

  “Cruiser leaves tomorrow morning.”

  I gestured out the large window on the west wall that overlooked Elliot Bay. “You want to go have a bite to eat? Out on the pier? There are still a couple of places to get decent seafood.”

  “You don’t even like seafood.”

  “Well.”

  She shook her head. “No, I’m going to pass. I have a lot of reading to do about the whole Ribon resettlement project. They estimate the first dome will be finished over the south end of Venasaille in a few months, and I have a
lot to learn before then. They want me to hit the ground running once I get there, and I’m still fighting the RuBy withdrawal. I won’t be able to get it there.” She smiled. “Not legally, of course.”

  “Of course. But you won’t need the RuBy, and you’ll be fine. I’m glad you’re doing this.”

  “They’re calling the south dome New Venasaille.”

  “Good choice.”

  “And they said yes to naming our building after Alan.”

  “The Brindos Building.”

  She nodded.

  “Good choice.”

  “I tried to get Terl’s name for the north dome, but they didn’t go for that. Too many negative connotations.”

  “Sure.”

  She fidgeted a little as we stood there facing each other for a few moments.

  “Well,” she said. “I better go.”

  “Dorie,” I said.

  She turned.

  “I’m sorry about Terl’s sculpture. Sorry we couldn’t get it back after opening the vault. I know how much it meant to you.”

  She shrugged and tucked a loose strand of her black hair behind her ear. “That’s okay. It would’ve been a nice reminder of him, but instead, I think of it as Terl’s gift to the Union. You know? I’m glad it—” She faltered, looked down at the floor.

  “Saved the world?”

  She smiled, raising her head. “Saved the Union.”

  “And he’s helping rebuild a world, through you.”

  “I’m going to do all I can.”

  “I do hope I can get to Ribon some day for a visit.”

  She laughed. “Awfully expensive for a P.I.”

  “I’ve got plans for private investigator domination.”

  “That’ll be a lot easier with your new partner.”

  “Jury’s out on that, but we’ll see.” I smiled. “Good-bye, Dorie.”

  “Good-bye, Dave.”

  When she left, I went back to my dividing wall, but it wasn’t long before Tem Forno came in. He had taken to wearing the gray overcoat Dorie had given to Brindos when they had escaped from Temonus. That didn’t stop him from complaining about how cold it was on Earth.

  “You just missed Dorie,” I said.

  He shook his head. “Caught her outside and we talked on the sidewalk out there. Everyone gave us a wide berth, and I think I can take credit for the car accident halfway down the street. Guy ran into an abandoned vehicle.”

  I laughed. “Get used to it.”

  He wrapped the coat tighter around him. “Look, I’m here on your suggestion, and I thank you, but it’s going to be difficult fitting in.”

  “You’ll be fine. People will get used to you, and you’re already a natural detective with your Kenn background.”

  “Maybe I should find a fedora to go with this jacket.”

  “That will be inconspicuous for sure.”

  “You only love me because I’ll be able to scare all the bad guys.”

  “Don’t forget your Helk underworld contacts.”

  “Yeah, those too, you love.”

  I reached up and patted his shoulder. I almost sprained my own shoulder doing that, but on Helkunntanas, a shoulder grab is a sign of friendship. Hey. I’m learning.

  “I’ll teach you everything I know,” I said.

  “And I still won’t know nothing,” he countered.

  I grinned, then clapped my hands together. “I’ve got your first job of the day ready,” I said.

  He eyed the plywood wall laid out on the floor, then looked at me with amusement. “Helk snot, that is one ugly wall.”

  “Shut up and lift.”

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Half Title

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Epilogue