Very Hard Choices

by Spider Robinson

  So: follow the rest of Walker's money.

  After the mortgage, his largest expenditures went for, in descending order:

  —food delivery, one quarter from the place McKinnon himself had dined earlier that evening, Collinsia Verna's, and three quarters from The Red Bliss, which appeared to be one of those "co-operatives" (how were other businesses structured? Anarchy?) that sold organic fruits and nuts to the organic nuts and fruits.

  —prodigious, Voltairean quantities of Tanzanian Peaberry coffee, ordered as beans in bulk by mail from Ontario.

  —books and CDs purchased from either amazon.com or one of its associated Used dealers.

  —postage apparently used to mail small quantities of discs and books to others, both in Canada and in the U.S.

  There were also regular cash withdrawals—at that same irritating interval, every three weeks—strongly suggesting an illegal drug. But the amounts were such that it was unlikely to be anything interesting. Pot, probably, British Columbia being the connoisseur marijuana mecca for the entire planet.

  So . . . basically, a guy with no life. Much like McKinnon himself, really, save for the pot addiction.

  McKinnon got up from the laptop and made another potlet of coffee-colored fluid. As it dripped, he opened a container of butter chicken and ate from it with his fingers. It was symphonic. When the bubbling sounds ceased he washed his hands in the sink, picked up a cuplet, looked at it, put it down, and took the whole potlet back to the computer with him.

  Now . . . where did Walker's money come from? A lot of it, but not all, came from his Op-Ed column, it turned out. He seemed to get paid a lot more per column than the other columnists who appeared on the same page, though his ran only . . . McKinnon smiled suddenly. Walker's column "Past Imperfect, Future Tense" ran every third Friday. The odd three-week interval was explained.

  So even at his unusually high word rate, he could not be bringing in enough to cover his nut then. McKinnon kept digging. It was not easy to figure out, but he had special forensic accountancy software designed for that express purpose which was not available to the general or even particular public. Before too long he understood that Walker's late wife had been a very successful painter, who had left enough to cover his needs for the rest of his days if necessary. But that principal was still untouched, because she had also left him an unknown but apparently substantial number of completed paintings. So far, every time his balance began to drop, he had produced one and sold it for enough to keep himself in coffee and CDs for another year or two—a total of four times so far.

  McKinnon wanted another potlet of "coffee," but was out of "coffee" pucks, save for the decaf, which he took to be a variant spelling of "defective." He got a canlet of Coke from the room's microbar, took that and the butter chicken container back to the desk. He ate a few bites with his fingers, then wiped them off with Kleenex and resumed netsearching.

  Okay. Now for the big question. Why was McKinnon studying this ingrown toenail of a man, this hermit who made his living lecturing an entire country about the events of the day? What was his connection to Zandor Zudenigo?

  The obvious approach was to start with the date Zudenigo had dropped off the planet, find out what Walker had been doing at the time, and then wind both their lives backward until they intersected. Again he had special software for the purpose—but he never even opened it.

  Because the very first thing he learned was that on the day Zudenigo had become a Ghost Who Walked, forty years earlier, Walker had been his college roommate. McKinnon must have seen his name in the files many times over the years; it had simply been too bland to stick. He said "Yes!" aloud, punched his thigh, sat back and resumed eating chicken without consciously noticing it.

  Bingo! It was confirmed, now. His target was alive . . . and close, too!

  Until now he had not been absolutely sure. The cop could have had some innocuous cop-reason to inquire after a man forty years dead over at the far end of another country. But at the first hint of trouble she had made a beeline for the dead man's old roommate, and then both of them had melted into the scenery. There was no reason to be that paranoid about a forty-year-dead guy unless he was not really dead. Case closed. Zudenigo was alive, somewhere in this area.

  And his two friends were even now making a beeline for Zudenigo to warn him of danger, with a head start that widened with each passing minute—

  Fortunately his thoughts reached that point before he had absent-mindedly finished all the chicken. He wolfed down everything else in the container instead, saving the meat for that damned cat he was going to have to get past. Then he shut his laptop and dressed quickly, pleased that he would be able to keep the beef brisket container sealed and have that for tomorrow's meal. He left in such disciplined haste that he very nearly caught Detective Constable Nika Mandiç loitering outside his B&B, and drove back to Russell Walker's place at exactly the island's maximum legal speed of 40 KPH, or, in his terms, a low idle. The street lights ended within what he would have called a couple of blocks, for good, and there was absolutely no other traffic on the road. After a while he decided he didn't need lights to drive that slowly on empty moonlit roads, and it would be better to approach Walker's home this late with maximum stealth, so pulled over for a moment, reached under the dash and, with the small sense of satisfaction he always got from disabling an unwanted safety feature, removed the fuse for his headlights.

  * * *

  The road leading to Walker's driveway was a slight upgrade. From long habit of caution McKinnon went a couple of driveways past it at the quietest speed he could, then put it in neutral, shut the engine, and let the car drift back downhill. It rolled slowly enough that even by moonlight he had no difficulty backing into Walker's driveway and coasting far enough to be in shadow from the road. He was nearly at rest when his starboard taillight hit the tree—but still going fast enough to produce a miniwhiplash he knew he would feel later, and an absurd amount of crunchy-tinkly noise, with an echo. There must be a damn mountain somewhere out there in the dark, though he didn't recall one.

  He sat still and waited for over a minute, listening for barking dogs, people asking one another what the hell that had been, approaching meteorites. He watched his rearview mirror closely enough to finally detect the approaching cat. He located the container of leftover butter chicken on the floor in front of the passenger seat, and got out of the car. He managed to open negotiations with the cat, arrive at mutually agreeable terms, and strike a bargain, but not without diffficulty. He was usually good with cats, but this one seemed to be feral. It displayed zero interest in human touch of any kind, but a lively interest in chicken. He gave it all the meat, sealing the bones back up in the container so it wouldn't choke on them, but the moment it finished the last morsel of bird it made a beeline for the container and announced that it wouldn't mind sampling the gravy too. He wrapped the bones in Kleenex, dropped them in the car's wastebasket, made sure its windows were sealed. As the cat began following the floppy container around the forest like a drunk chasing his hat, McKinnon took two steps and disappeared, moving through the woods beside Walker's driveway like the shadow cast by a suspicion.

  Nearly as quietly as the second cat, who materialized in his path about three or four meters ahead and to the right.

  No more chicken left. He froze and watched the cat carefully, looking for flattened ears, arched back or rapid tail movement, and listening for growling, or worse, hissing. It blinked at him for a few seconds . . . then put its tail straight in the air and came prancing up to see if McKinnon's hand smelled good enough to be scratched by. It did. He got on one knee and gave the new cat about twenty seconds' worth of scratching. When he heard the other cat moving somewhere in the woods behind him, he struggled to his feet and continued on his way.

  He approached the house with extreme care, watchful of alarms, but encountered none. The building was dark, inside and out. He circled it to be sure. Nothing brighter than the inevitable standby lights o
r digital time displays was visible at any window, not so much as a candle. A small outbuilding briefly held his interest because of faint light from its windows, but it turned out to be only an empty office containing a Powerbook laptop with a gaudy screensaver. He checked the door carefully, found it unlocked, and was tempted to slip inside and examine the computer. But he knew he had to confirm that the house was empty first. His shoes were very muddy from walking through wet woods; he doubled back to a hose he'd seen around the side of the house and was able to tip enough water out of it to clean his shoes, so they would leave no prints inside. He unhooked from his key ring a miniflashlight, the size of the cap on a felt tip marker, and confirmed by touch that it was set for lowest power and smallest aperture.

  He was not too surprised to find the front door unlocked—he was beginning to get used to Canada—but he was surprised almost to the point of indignation when he learned that it had no lock. Anyone who cared to turn the doorknob could walk in. It made him suspicious enough to dial his miniflash one step brighter and double-check for a silent alarm, but he found none.

  He suppressed his irritation, and everything else, and slipped into the house.

  He tossed the place slowly, thoroughly, making careful use of his flashlight. Walker clearly lived alone. Every wall of every room except the kitchen and bathrooms seemed to be obscured by tall bookshelves, about a quarter of which held CDs, cassettes or vinyl records. He had four TVs, kitchen, livingroom and both bedrooms, but all of them were cheap crap, no flat screens, no big screens even. Two had attendant VCRs rather than DVD players. Only the set in the master bedroom, a 28-inch tube, had external speakers, and just two of them. Every piece of furniture and appliance in the house was adequate but cheap; all the carpets had acne; all the walls needed paint. The sound system in the dining room contained no components less than ten years old and some much older. Everything he saw was just good enough for its purpose—with a single exception: an absurdly high-tech Swiss unit in the kitchen that produced single cups of fresh ground French-Press-style coffee at the press of a button and cleaned itself afterward. But even that was clearly long past its warrantee.

  McKinnon found himself starting to like Walker—the man treated himself well, but did not waste a dime impressing anyone else. The place reeked of marijuana, but otherwise closely resembled McKinnon's own current apartment in Virginia.

  He kept up a running search for stashes, hiding places, secret compartments that might conceal clues to Zudenigo's whereabouts. There are a million places to stash something in a house, and he knew them all. But found none in this house. The man's marijuana supply—less than an ounce, but strong by the smell of it—was "hidden" in his fridge, in a transparent plastic container.

  He found signs of abandonment on a moment's notice. A stereo amplifier left on. Thermostat left on day setting. Crumbs on kitchen counters. Three cups of coffee dregs in the living room.

  The master bedroom was comfortable and uncluttered, reasonably clean and orderly. The kingsize bed was made, and McKinnon confirmed that its sheets and pillowcases had been changed recently. Walker was surprisingly neat and tidy for a widower. This room was where he did most of his TV viewing; it had the largest tube, the only surround speakers in the house, and a fair-sized collection of DVDs and VHS tapes. There was even a tall mirror propped against the far wall at just the right angle to the master bathroom so that Walker could follow a program while sitting on the throne or soaking in the tub.

  There was a guest's suitcase in the guest bedroom, open on the bed but not yet unpacked. The cop's? No. Male clothing and ancillaries. Someone who lived and dressed considerably better than Walker. No ID present. The tag on the suitcase handle gave an address in New York City, but no name; the baggage code too indicated that the bag had been checked in at LaGuardia in New York. The bathroom across the hall showed no signs of recent use.

  McKinnon thought about that for awhile. Less than an hour after she arrives, Detective Constable Mandiç persuades not only Walker but a newly arrived houseguest to join her in dropping everything and running like hell. How? How many people could possibly share the secret of a telepath who had been hiding successfully—from McKinnon!—for forty years now, and what were the odds of a third one showing up from afar on the very day McKinnon himself finally caught up? He tabled the question and finished his sweep.

  The only remaining room was used for storage, of the sorts of items that would have been in an attic or basement if the house had featured either. He gave it a bored but thorough inspection, finding nothing of interest. He was feeling impatient by then, but forced himself to go through the whole house room by room once more. Only then did he go eagerly back outside to toss Walker's office.

  It was a glorified shed, perhaps twenty-four feet by twelve, with three windows fitted with venetian blinds. Inside, every inch of wall was obscured by nine-foot-tall bookshelves, all of them full, handmade by some local artisan to accommodate the windows. An old wooden table covered with a cheap tablecloth served as a desk and held a shiny new Powerbook with cable internet, a big cathode-tube external monitor, and a pair of Lava Lites on either side of it, one blue and one clear. On a small wheeled table beside the desk were both a laserprinter and a color inkjet printer; they and the Powerbook and the seven-speaker surround-sound system connected to it were the most modern and expensive gear McKinnon had seen so far, no more than a year or so old. This was where Walker spent most of his time.

  He sat down at the keyboard, killed the hypnotic screensaver, opened a browser, accessed a page that was decidedly not part of the World Wide Web, downloaded some software money couldn't buy, and scanned Walker's computer rather more thoroughly than a Vancouver Apple dealer could have. Nothing he turned up was of any use or interest to him, as he had expected going in.

  He gave some of Walker's Op Ed columns a hasty scan, and was surprised to find very few stupid opinions. Walker had correctly assessed the significance of 9/11 on September 11, for example, and had seen through the Iraq bullshit from Day One. He had the sense to know and the courage to say in print that Osama had probably been dead for years. The man tended to get his supporting evidence from sorces like The Economist rather than American or Canadian news media. Yet he was not a knee-jerk American-basher, like many Canadians and nearly all ex-American Canadians. One paragraph in particular caught McKinnon's eye: "America sometimes fails to live up to its own ideals. If you want to say 'often,' I won't argue. So has every nation since history began. But it must be admitted that so far, the United States of America has the most magnificent set of ideals any nation ever failed to live up to." McKinnon was starting to like the man; he hoped it would not be necessary to end him.

  But his hard drive definitely did not contain the text strings "Zandor," "Zudenigo," or "Smelly" with a capital S. Or anything else useful. His e-mail contacts included a few names Homeland Security considered questionable, but no more than was reasonable for a national columnist, and none that were flagged red or even amber. He did not have a website. He did not blog or IM or videochat. He had hardly any real friends—very few of his correspondences produced more than half a dozen exchanges in a year—but he certainly knew some interesting people. His iTunes library ran heavily to jazz, folk, soul and Sixties rock.

  McKinnon sighed, put the laptop to sleep, left the office and found himself reentering the main house without knowing why. From long experience he knew that meant he had seen something in the house that was not right, and failed to consciously notice it at the time. So he let his feet go where they would. He found himself approaching the spare room used for storage of obsolete junk.

  Five steps before he reached it, he suddenly remembered what he was going to see that was wrong the moment he passed through that door. A laptop. A Mac Powerbook, but several iterations older than the one in Walker's office, a 1400 series. On one that old, all the connections were in a bay in the back, and playing back memory now he was certain the only thing connected to this one was its po
wer cord. He had noticed a tiny light on the laptop's lid blinking at him, announcing that it was sleeping rather than shut off. He remembered seeing a blue cable coming in through the wall that had to be internet, but was sure it had ended in a coil on the floor, nowhere near the computer.

  He stopped to think it through. Lots of people kept obsolete old computers around. The new one might break. Maybe a favorite old game would not work with newer operating systems. A Powerbook in sleep mode consumed very little power, so why not keep it plugged in? But even a 1400 could collect and send e-mail, do simple net-surfing, play internet radio—so why would a man with high speed internet access handy choose not to plug it in?

  Only one answer occurred to McKinnon, and it made him smile. Walker had information on that computer he wanted to be certain could not be hacked, not even by people like McKinnon.

  It was theoretically possible to incurse a computer through its power cord, but most civilians did not even suspect that, and McKinnon himself could not have done it with the tools at hand—or even had it done on his authorization back when he'd been a Company man. He took a moment to marvel at Walker's peculiar form of paranoia. He had taken precautions sufficient to foil a cyber-antagonist as powerful and capable as the Company itself, or the Mossad, or the late Komitet Gosudarstveno Bezhopaznosti. Yet he'd taken no precautions at all against a man walking in his front door while he was away.

  Already grinning as he tried to imagine what lovely information he was about to acquire, McKinnon resumed walking, and within three steps was in the room and staring directly at the spot where the Powerbook 1400—

  —had been, half an hour earlier, and was no more.

  The window was wide open now. Knickknacks that had been on the sill were scattered on the floor. Someone outside was heading for the trees.