Flash

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  By three in the afternoon I was so jumpy that I couldn't concentrate on finishing the Reilin project. Could Central Four have another agenda? Why did the safo intelligence system need an observer? But then, why had the system risked itself in saving me? That—and the orders for equipment—pointed to good faith. If there happened to be some kind of sting operation in effect, it was so convoluted that I couldn't figure it out. Besides, merely observing couldn't be much more than a misdemeanor or the like—unless the sting called for me to get killed in a situation that pinned everything on Deng and ISS.

  In the end, I was trusting an intelligence system because I had no one else left to trust. The flesh and blood safos hadn't helped me. Nor had all the Denv monitoring systems. Neither had the politicians, not that I'd expected anything there. My clients were only interested in what I could do for them, and with Aliora and Dierk gone, I had no family.

  I put Dierk's system in standby, although with all that I'd added it was probably fair to call it Dierk's and mine, and walked down to the great room where Charis was trying to improve Alan's chess game.

  Both looked up at me, almost in relief.

  "How are things going?" I asked.

  "She always wins," Alan said.

  "You'll win more when you're older," I pointed out.

  He didn't look convinced.

  "You will," Charis promised.

  Alan's expression was close to a pout.

  I sat down on the straight-backed chair against the wall, back from the inlaid chess table. "I didn't learn chess until I was older. You'll probably be better than I am if you keep at it."

  Alan sighed.

  Charis began to reset the pieces on the board.

  "Do you have to go out, Uncle Jonat?" asked Alan.

  "I still have to make a living, Alan, and I hope I'll be able to arrange things better in the future. But with the time I was hurt, and everything that happened, there are things I have to do."

  Charis nodded sagely, almost a little too smartly. That was something else I'd have to watch.

  "Can you tell us about when you and Mother were little?" Alan asked.

  I nodded, going through memories, before settling on the story about the time when I'd turned one of Aliora's dolls into an unwilling participant in a buoyancy experiment. The problem had been that the doll had been a fashion doll, and not a play doll, and I'd ruined the clothes, the hair, and pretty much everything. I'd also ended up doing extra chores for months.

  The two were smiling, if not laughing, when the Bowes couple arrived at precisely four o'clock. They parked at one side of the rotunda, and then walked to the entry. I opened the nebulae doors. They made me think of Aliora, and I swallowed.

  The two matched their images. She was a wiry woman, probably close to Aliora's age, with short dark hair and a warm smile. "Colonel deVrai, I'm so glad to meet you. Elmer has told me so much about you."

  I had to wonder where her husband had found out about me. "I hope he hasn't said too much." I turned to him after closing the door behind them.

  Elmer Bowes wasn't quite my height, but his shoulders were broader. He had a lazy smile that suggested he knew how to use the devices concealed in the broad equipment belt. "Colonel, I didn't tell her that much. Everyone heard about the Guyana mess."

  "You were in service?"

  "Twenty-five years. Made master tech. Decided a short-stipend retirement was better than more stabilization actions."

  I had to agree with that. "I've never needed a bodyguard, but I'm glad you have those qualifications."

  "Colonel... with your background, I can see why."

  "I don't even know anyone who has a bodyguard, and the only one I know about is a fellow named Vorhees." I shrugged. "You ever hear of him?"

  "I've heard of him. Most licensed guards have. He has to pay twice the going rate for his swing men."

  "Swing men?"

  "He's got two guards. They've been with him for years, but they've got families, or have emergencies. Most clients need swing men to fill those gaps. Agencies like Vonos or Agnopoulos take care of that."

  That made sense. "Did you start that way after you left active duty?"

  Bowes nodded. "Got them to pay for the licensing and certification. After two years, I'd had enough, and Devon pointed out that people who need guards, and some who don't, need security for their children. She takes care of them, and I watch for trouble." He laughed. "She's good, too. Certified like me."

  I began to understand why they were expensive—and why they were near the top of Aliora's list. "I appreciate your being able to come on short notice."

  "We wouldn't be able to if it weren't the middle of a holiday week," Devon Bowes interjected.

  "I'll make a note of that and make sure that I plan farther ahead in the future."

  They both smiled, almost indulgently, and I got the impression that they'd heard those words more than a few times before. I couldn't help laughing, if softly, for a moment. "You've heard that before."

  "Yes, sir." Elmer Bowes grinned.

  It only took a few minutes to get them settled, and switch the security to standard, rather than personal. Then I was off, driving my own Altimus across Denv. Even taking the back roads and not the guideways, where even under automated control traffic slowed, I didn't pull into the garage at my house until after five.

  Once there, I had to get ready. I might be scheduled to be an observer, but I wasn't going unprepared or unarmed. I wore a night-gray singlesuit, also left over from my Marine days, and made sure I had the commando slingshot with both kinds of darts, and the tensile gloves, and an undershirt with tensile-strength panels. Full body tensility had been tried, but no matter how it was engineered, it ended up restricting body movement. Nanite screens were still at the point where they weren't practical for anything smaller than armored military vehicles because the screens by themselves generated too much heat and didn't do anything for concussive effects. The undershirt would stop small arms and mitigate neuralwhip shock—if I happened to be lucky enough to be hit in the chest or back. Still, it was better than nothing.

  While I waited for Paula, I did a little more planning for my next mission, checking maglev schedules to old downtown Denv and ways to spot-short an entry security system, although I hoped to avoid that.

  Before I knew it, the Central Four link was telling me, Officer Athene is outside.

  Less than a minute later, I got the same message from my gatekeeper, and I walked to the front of the house. The vehicle parked outside was a gray van, the ubiquitous kind used for maintenance. The female safo who walked to the door of my house was taller than I recalled Paula to be, with sandy blonde hair, not white blonde, but her eyes were still stormy gray. Her nose was strong, but not overlarge, and thinner, and her cheekbones were higher. Her shoulders were either slightly broader or more muscular. She was also wearing a dark gray singlesuit that my eyes had trouble seeing—blend-ins. She carried another set in her left hand.

  I opened the door, but didn't say anything until she had stepped inside and I had closed it. I thought I smelled the faintest trace of Fleur-de-Matin, but then, I decided I hadn't. "Paula?"

  "Yes, Jonat?"

  Her voice was perhaps half an octave lower, with a musical overtone. I liked it. In fact, I had to admit that she was more attractive to me, perhaps because the overall impression was of human beauty, not engineered beauty. That was supremely ironic, because Central Four had engineered her appearance.

  "I like the way you look and sound."

  "Thank you." With the words came a shy smile.

  "Central Four said you might be bruised..."

  "Makeup can do wonders." Her laugh was as musical as her voice.

  "You're really Paula?"

  "The same. The one who saw you in the medcrib when you realized your sister was dead ... who inspected your house and found the security traps ... who reported the similarity between your DNA and that of three of the unregistered cydroids..."

&n
bsp; For some reason, I found her presence disconcerting, and I asked, "Who do you think is behind these cydroids?"

  "The probability approaches unity that they were created to show a link to the shadow assembly of Mars and the PAMD." She held up the blend-ins. "You need these. They're tailored for you."

  "Do you know everything about me?" I took the special singlesuit.

  "In terms of physical description and physiology ... yes." Her smile was close to enigmatic.

  "And comparatively, I know nothing of you." After the briefest of pauses, I added, "I'll need to change."

  "You should avoid bringing any metal on your person."

  "I hadn't planned on carrying any."

  "Set them as white coveralls for now."

  "I will. Now ... if you'll excuse me..."

  Paula—the new ... or renewed Paula—nodded deferentially as I eased away. I could rationalize my wanting privacy to change on the grounds it was better that an agent of Central Four didn't see what I had on and about me, but I couldn't lie to myself. There was something about her ... yet my enhancements had shown no internal differences. She looked different, but she didn't smell different, and my sense of her was the same. Was it me? Or the situation?

  I changed quickly, transferring the gloves, the cord, and the slingshot and darts into the hidden pockets in the singlesuit, pockets that could have been designed for them—and might well have been. Blend-ins were designed to be roomy, with harnesses inside the fabric that could carry two cases under the camouflage fabric. I didn't have anything that needed that kind of storage, but I wondered what Paula carried inside, if anything.

  After cinching the closures, I found the polarity adjustment and set it so that I was wearing a white coverall singlesuit. There was also a set of matching gloves in one thigh pocket. I left those there.

  Paula was waiting in the kitchen, sipping water from a glass. She looked up. "You don't mind, do you?"

  "No. I should have offered."

  Paula extended a badge. "This is an ISS ID and entry badge. There's also a hood for you in the van."

  "The security acts allow you to counterfeit the ISS credentials?"

  "Only for purposes of observation. The supporting documentation for the Act noted that no announced inspection or observation in history had ever been successful."

  That was doubtless true, but I was getting a crash course in the underside of NorAm government and politics, and it was a little disturbing— and I'd thought I had few illusions. "The blend-ins have a setting for ISS?"

  She nodded.

  I set the security system and followed her out to the van. She drove.

  "Your hood is on the console. You need to put it in your kit when we unload the van."

  I made a note of that and, once we were away from the house and headed back south asked, "The van has nanetic color system that can duplicate an ISS vehicle?"

  "Yes. This is an ISS-registered vehicle. Both IDs are on file with ISS internal security. Getting inside the outer security perimeter is the easy part. Beyond that, it becomes harder, because the SPD protocols are kept separate from the main facility systems."

  "How exactly are we going to do that?"

  "There is a service tunnel, and it contains a hidden lock and exit from the SPD facility. It is used for SPD purposes that might not be considered legal if they were ever prosecuted."

  "Does the district advocate know about them?"

  "That would be speculation."

  "In short, he knows, but there's not enough evidence to override the protections of the privacy laws."

  "That probability approaches unity as well." Paula gestured to the folder on the van's center console. "There is the facility schematic. You might wish to look at it."

  I did. With my low-illumination enhancements, I didn't need to turn on the van's inside lighting. The facility was on the reclaimed site of a place called Rocky Flats, one of the early Commonocracy nuclear weapons assembly facilities, and one that had engendered more than a little controversy. ISS had finished the cleanup nearly sixty years earlier, and, to show good faith, had purchased the property for its operational and equipment design center. That had been a sound decision, both economically and politically, because the cost was low and because the government was grateful. No one had truly believed that the nanetic cleanup would work, and the ISS commitment had given a big boost to other cleanup projects. As a result, no one in power in the NorAm government had ever looked too closely at the multi, even after it had gotten into lull-scale security operations and arms production, as well as serving the function of armorer for MultiCor and its CorPak subsidiary on Mars and in the Belt.

  Before long, Paula had turned the van onto the approach road to ISS. The first sign read: INDUSTRIAL SECURITY SYSTEMS: IMPERVIOUS, IMPENETRABLE. Below that was a warning: THIS IS A SECURE FACILITY AND REQUIRES ADVANCE CLEARANCE. PLEASE CONTACT THE ISS SECURITY OFFICE AT LEAST 24 HOURS IN ADVANCE. After another fifty meters was a second sign: TRESPASSERS MAY BE SUBJECTED TO FORCIBLE RESTRAINT AND REMOVAL TO CIVIL AUTHORITY.

  I could sense the energies playing around the van even before we reached the gate. Interesting enough, there were no more signs, just a guardhouse designed to withstand ultra-ex and the impact of an orbital-launched smart rock. The fence was no more than nine feet high, clearly designed to stop casual intruders, while the real defenses were not in view. There were two ISS security types waiting—one male and one female. She looked tougher than most commandos and probably was. Both had the professionally bored expressions of security types who seemed as though they'd just as soon destroy an approaching vehicle as go through the bother of checking it out and letting it enter the facility.

  "Badges?"

  We lifted them, and she pointed the scanner at them.

  "GIL."

  The sampler took a minute flake of skin off the back of my wrist.

  "Entry reason and pass?"

  "Utility maintenance," Paula replied, handing a flat datacard to the guard.

  That got scanned as well.

  "You're scheduled for three hours. You need more time, report back here in person ten minutes before your sched block is over."

  "Will do," Paula replied, her voice as hard as the security guard's.

  I didn't say anything as Paula waited for the gate to open. She drove past the gate and continued onward for almost a kay, before turning right on a narrower road.

  Everything you say out loud is likely to be monitored. The link transmission felt as though it had come from Central Four, but with more warmth.

  What about links?

  Interception and interpretation are unlikely. You have a private protocol with Central Four, and so does Paula.

  I didn't know what to say aloud. So I didn't say anything.

  Paula pulled up into a small paved space before a set of gates, or gates within gates, because there was a man-sized gate set in the middle of a larger gate that might have accommodated a military attack vehicle.

  I thought this was a utility tunnel, I observed.

  That is its definition. It has other uses.

  "You get to carry the kits," Paula said out loud. They have blend-in covers. You'll need to reset them later.

  So I got out of the van, with the blend-in hood in my hand, and took the two kits, putting the hood in one and wondering how and when I was supposed to reset the kits' covers. Paula lifted another case. As I turned to follow her, I could see that the van now bore the ISS logo and initials, with the words "Maintenance Section" below.

  The van locked as Paula stepped up to the smaller gate and offered a keybloc. The gate slid back, and I followed her through. We walked down a permacrete ramp to yet another door, this one set beside an even larger vehicle-sized door. It was steel, and looked solid enough to stop just about anything, even without the nanite shields whose energy my enhancements sensed. The smaller screens on the personnel door faded as Paula proffered a keybloc. It could have been the same one.

  Once you en
ter the tunnel, you and Paula will be on your own. The tunnel is shielded against even Central Four transmissions. If you remain close to each other, you can link directly.

  On our own? That shocked me. I was going with a Central Four cydroid out of communications with Central Four. I don't even know what I'm supposed to do ... besides watch.

  Paula is very capable of independent operations. There have been many times when there have been no communications.

  I thought she was a cydroid...

  She is. You were born. She was created by an enhanced and artificial process of the same nature. Like all humans of whatever origin, if educated and trained, she is capable of very independent action. She is highly educated.

  The door opened. Paula looked at me with what could only be an impish smile. "You first."

  I carried the two cases inside, into a long tunnel with pale cream and green permaplast walls and indirect overhead lighting. The air smelled faintly sterile with a faint hint of ozone. The door closed.

  Now what? I asked.

  Start walking. We walk about five hundred meters, where we inspect the main tunnel utility panel. That's where I install a temporary bypass to the scanning system that will show two sections of the tunnel as vacant. That is where the hidden shipping entrance to SPD is.

  What convinced me that Paula was now out of Central's range or control was one simple word—"I." I'd never heard it from her before.

  We're wearing blend-ins...

  The scanners operate beyond visual frequencies.

  That unfortunately made sense.

  We'll take the side access tunnel. There will be at least one guard.