by John Scalzi
“Where are we going?” Robin asked Creek.
“I have no idea yet,” Creek said. “Give me a minute.”
“Okay,” Robin said. “But I’d really feel more confident if you had a plan.”
“So would I,” Creek said. “Would you mind if I made a call?”
Robin shrugged. “It’s your communicator, Harry. Do you want me to stand somewhere else?”
“You don’t have to,” Creek said. Robin dropped herself into the seat next to Creek. Creek flipped open his communicator and accessed his home network; Brian’s voice popped up a second later.
“You’re alive,” Brian said, without preamble. “You should know most of the Alexandria Police Department is crawling through the mall right now. The police network tells of a shootout and three or four guys dead and another couple wounded. You should also know the Alexandria police have put out an APB for you and your redhead friend. They got your description from a shoe salesman, apparently. You left your signature on something?”
“A rental agreement,” Creek said. “For shoes.”
“Not the smartest thing you could have done,” Brian said.
“We weren’t expecting to be attacked by armed men,” Creek said.
“You might want to internalize that as a given from now on,” Brian said. “Anyway. You and she are wanted on a truly impressive number of charges. Are you okay?”
“We’re fine,” Creek said. “We’re on the Metro right now.”
“I’m aware of that,” Brian said. “I’m getting your position from the signal. Which by the way I’ve now spoofed so that if anyone else, say the police, get the bright idea to call you, they won’t be able to track your movement.”
“Thanks,” Creek said.
“It’s nothing. Your communicator is on the network. It’s like redecorating a spare room.”
“Listen,” Creek said. “That credit card receipt I had you follow up on. What did you get off of it?”
“It’s fraudulent, of course,” Brian said. “The money in the account is real enough—it’s a debit-style card. But the name on the card is ‘Albert Rosenweig,’ whose identity is about one document thick. After the card there’s nothing.”
“So you don’t have anything on this guy,” Creek said.
“I didn’t say that,” Brian said. “The man signs his name every time he uses the card—the signature gets sent and stored. I paid a little visit to his card issuer to get more samples of his signature, developed a good handwriting model for our man Albert, and then cross-referenced the handwriting style with the government’s database of signatures that go with our National Identity Cards.”
“That’s good thinking,” Creek said.
“Thanks,” Brian said. “It’s also dreadfully illegal and a true pain in the ass, since there are over 250 million American males at the moment. Fortunately, I’m a computer now. And after combing through DNA, this is a comparative breeze.”
“Who is he?” Creek asked.
“I’m ninety-three percent sure it’s this guy.” Brian sent a picture that popped up on the communicator’s small display. “Alberto Roderick Acuna. I say ninety-three percent because the handwriting samples don’t have all the information I need—signing on the signature pads for your credit card purchases doesn’t capture stuff like the amount of pressure you apply to certain parts of your pen stroke. I had to do some estimating based on general handwriting statistical models. Which didn’t previously exist, I should note. I’ve been keeping busy in your absence.”
“Well, good job,” Creek said. “That’s the guy.”
“Congratulations, then, because you’ve got yourself a real winner,” Brian said. “This Acuna character was an Army Ranger—he fought at the Battle of Pajmhi, incidentally—but received an dishonorable discharge. He was suspected in a floater accident that killed his colonel. Court-martialed but acquitted. Apparently the evidence wasn’t great. Right after being discharged he spent ninety days in the DC lock-up for assault. He beat the hell out of an aide to then-Congresswoman Burns. In what I’m sure was a total coincidence, Acuna thumped the aide just before a vote on tariffs for Nidu textile imports. Burns was usually pro-trade but went against her voting record on that one. Since he got out he’s worked as a private investigator. You’ll be interested to know that one of his biggest clients is the American Institute for Colonization and its head, Jean Schroeder. Acuna’s also been more or less continually investigated by DC, Maryland, and Virginia police as well as the US and UNE feds. He’s a suspect in at least a couple of missing persons cases. Missing people who, in what I’m sure is another total coincidence, had crossed swords with either Schroeder or the AIC.”
“I think we were meant to be next on that list,” Creek said. “Acuna was waiting for us in the mall.”
“Did you kill him?” Brian asked.
“I don’t think so, but I don’t think he’s in very good shape at the moment. Which reminds me—” Creek fished in his pocket and pulled out Agent Dwight’s ID card. “Can you look through the FBI database and see if you can find me anything on an agent named Reginald Dwight?”
“UNE FBI or US FBI?” Brian asked.
“US,” Creek said.
“Okay. I was looking for information on Acuna earlier so I should be able to patch back in. Give me a second. I’d guess that’s a fake name too, though. For one thing, it’s the real name of a twentieth-century composer who went by the name Elton John.”
“I don’t know him,” Creek said.
“Sure you do,” Brian said. “Remember that kids’ tunes collection I had when I was seven? ‘Rocket Man.’ I love that tune.”
“It was longer ago for some of us than others,” Creek said.
“Whatever,” Brian said. “Okay, I’m wrong. Turns out there was an FBI agent Reginald Dwight. But I doubt it was your guy, since Agent Dwight was killed three years ago. One of those militia whackjobs in Idaho shot him while the FBI was storming his compound. Whoever your guy is, he’s not the walking dead.”
“He might be now,” Creek said.
“Speaking of which, you look like hell,” Brian said. “I’m looking at you through the little camera on your communicator. Your cheek is bleeding. You might want to get that wiped off before one of your trainmates decides you’re creepy enough to be checked out by the cops.”
“Right,” Creek said. “Thanks. I’ll call you back soon.”
“I’ll be here,” Brian said, and hung up. Creek lightly brushed his cheek and felt blood moisten his fingers. He wiped them on the inside of his jacket and asked Robin if she had any tissues in her purse. Robin looked up, noticed the blood, nodded, and started digging through her purse. “Shit,” she said, after a second.
“What’s wrong?” Creek asked.
“You never realize how much crap you have in your purse until you’re looking for one specific thing,” Robin said, and started taking objects out of her purse to make her search easier: an address book, a makeup compact, a pen, a tampon applicator. Robin looked up at Creek after the last one. “Pretend you didn’t see that,” she said.
Creek pointed to the pen. “Can I see that pen?” he asked.
“Sure,” Robin said, and handed over the pen.
“This is the one from the store, right?” Creek asked. “The one the gecko man left.”
Robin nodded. “Yeah. Why?”
Creek turned the pen around in his hands, and then started taking it apart. After a minute he snapped off the clip and turned it over. “Shit,” he said.
“What is it?” Robin asked.
“Bug,” Creek said. “They’ve been tracking us since we left the mall.” He dropped the clip and stomped on it with his foot, twisting it into the floor of the train. “We need to get away. Far away.”
“Fuck!” Archie pounded the table his computer was on.
This attracted Acuna from the next room. “That better not be what I think it is,” he said.
“Creek found the pen,” Archie sa
id. “It’s not my fault.”
“I don’t care whose fault it was,” Acuna said. “You need to find him, now.”
Archie glowered at the screen and from the last coordinates of the pen guessed where Creek and the sheep lady would be in the Metro system. The two of them were approaching L’Enfant Plaza; they were on the Blue Line train but L’Enfant Plaza served every line in the city except the Red and Gray lines. If they got off their train there, who knows where they’d end up.
Got off their train.
“I’ve got it,” Archie said. He closed the track window on the pen and opened up a command line.
“Got what?” Acuna asked.
“My dad was an electrical systems engineer for the DC Metro,” Archie said. “Five years ago, the entire electrical system got a refit, and my dad hired me freelance to help with the code. Part of the electrical system deals with managing the power to the trains—”
“Skip the technical shit,” Acuna said. “Get to the point. Quick.”
“The Metro trains are maglev—magnetic levitation,” Archie said. “Each train used to get full power for its magnets no matter what, but that got too expensive. The retrofit allowed each train to use only as much power as it needs to run, based on the gross weight of the train. The amount of power allotted to each train adjusts in real time.”
“So?” Acuna said.
“So, every time someone gets on a train or off a train, the amount of power sent to the train increases or decreases by an amount that’s in a direct relationship to the weight of those people.” Archie looked over to Acuna, whose face was a dangerous shade of blank. He decided to make it even simpler. “If we can guess how much the two of them weigh, we might be able to guess if they’ve gotten off their train and where they might be going.”
Acuna’s eyebrows shot up; he got it. “You’ll need to get into the Metro’s system,” he said.
Archie had turned back to his computer. “Dad had a back door into the system he let me use while I was freelancing,” he said. “I’m guessing after he retired no one bothered to close it.”
Fifteen seconds later: “Nope, they didn’t. We’re in,” Archie said. “You saw the two of them, right? How much would you guess they weighed?”
“I don’t know,” Acuna said. “Both of them seemed pretty fit.”
“How tall were they?” Archie asked.
“He was about my height,” Acuna said. “I’m about five ten. She was a few inches shorter, I’d guess.”
“About five six, then, let’s say,” Archie said. “So let’s say he’s about 180 and she’s 120, so that’s 300 pounds, which is about 136 kilos.” Archie punched up a calculator on his computer screen and pounded in some numbers, and then pointed at the resulting number. “All right, if the train they got in was empty, that’s how much energy would need to be fed to the train to compensate for their additional weight when they got on. So we’re looking for something in that neighborhood.”
Archie opened up another window. “Okay, here’s a list of the Blue Line trains currently in operation. Click this here, and now we have them arranged by when they stopped at the Arlington Mall station. Disregard the trains going out from DC, we have four trains that stopped at the station in the time window we’re looking for.” Archie selected each of the trains; four new windows opened up. Archie selected the “Power Management” option for each; each window became a spiky chart.
“No,” Archie said, closing one chart. “No,” he said again a few seconds later, closing the next chart. “Yes!” he said to the third one, and blew up the chart to maximum size. “Look here,” Archie said, pointing to the graph. “Power goes down because people are stepping off the train, then you get some noise because people are stepping off and on simultaneously. But here”—Archie pointed to a small uptick—“is a power boost that’s right near what we’re looking for, for about 136 kilos. That’s assuming they stepped on the train together, as opposed to one fatso.”
“That’s swell,” Acuna said, and Archie realized that of the many things Acuna might be, “patient” was never going to be one of them. “Now tell me if they’re still on the goddamn train.”
Archie pulled up a real-time chart of the train’s power management, which showed the train’s last five minutes of power usage. “Looks like the train just left L’Enfant,” Archie said. “Lots of people getting on and off the train, but none looks like the 136-kilo power spike or drop. I’m guessing they’re still on the train.”
“You’re guessing,” Acuna said.
“Mr. Acuna,” Archie said. “I’m doing the best I can. I can’t help that he busted the tracking pen. But short of the tracking pen or getting a feed from the Metro cameras, this is as good as it gets.”
Acuna stared at Archie just long enough for Archie to wonder if he was going to smack him again. Then, by God, Acuna actually smiled. “Fair enough,” he said. “Keep your eye on the graph, Archie. Don’t let them get away. Let me know as soon as you think they’ve gotten off the train.” He clapped his hand on Archie’s shoulder as he turned to go. Archie realized Acuna had actually called him by his given name.
“Ben—may I call you Ben?” Narf-win-Getag asked, settling down in his chair.
“By all means, Mr. Ambassador,” Ben Javna said. Being of inferior rank to the ambassador, Javna had remained standing and had moved out in front of his desk. Staying behind the desk would have been considered a breach of etiquette.
“Thank you,” Narf-win-Getag said. “I know my people have a reputation for being socially standoffish, but in private we can be just as relaxed as any sentient being. I even encourage my secretary to call me ‘Narf’ when we are doing private business.”
“And does she, Mr. Ambassador?” Javna asked.
“Oh, of course she doesn’t,” Narf-win-Getag said. “She wouldn’t dare. But it’s nice of me to offer, don’t you think?”
“And how may I be of service to you this evening, Mr. Ambassador,” Javna said.
“Secretary Soram came and visited me just now to deliver the good news that you’ve found our lost sheep,” Narf-win-Getag said.
“Did he, now,” Javna said, as neutrally as possible.
“Yes,” Narf-win-Getag said. “Although I’m led to understand that our sheep in question isn’t a sheep at all but a young human with our sheep DNA encoded in hers. Curious. Ben, may I trouble you for something to drink?”
“Of course, Mr. Ambassador,” Javna said.
“Eighteen-year-old Glenlivet, if you have any,” Narf-win-Getag said. “I love its bouquet.”
“I believe Secretary Heffer may have some in his bar,” Javna said, and opened his door to have Barbara get a glass.
“Excellent. Normally, you understand, I would go to Secretary Heffer to chat about this, but seeing as he is out of town at the moment, and given the time constraint we’re under, it makes sense to talk to you.”
“I appreciate that, Mr. Ambassador,” Javna said.
“Good, good,” Narf-win-Getag said. “So, anyway, Ben. I’ll be happy to take her off your hands now.”
“You mean the girl, Mr. Ambassador?” Javna asked. Barbara slipped her hand through the door to deliver the drink; Javna took it.
“Yes, that’s right,” Narf-win-Getag said.
“I’m afraid we have a problem there, sir,” Javna said, and handed Narf-win-Getag his drink. “The young woman in question has not come to the State Department yet.”
“Well, certainly you know where she is,” Narf-win-Getag said. He grimaced at his glass. “I’d like this on the rocks,” he said, handing it back to Javna.
“Of course, Mr. Ambassador,” Javna said, and took the glass to his own bar. “I’m sorry to say that in fact we don’t know where she is at the moment.”
Narf-win-Getag snorted impatiently. “Secretary Soram seemed convinced she was in your possession,” he said.
“Secretary Soram was enthusiastic but not in possession of all the facts,” Javna said. He dropped ic
e into the glass with his tongs. “We know the identity of the woman in question and a member of the State Department has gone to speak to her about giving her assistance. That’s where it stands at the moment.”
“It seems inconceivable that a secretary in your planetary administration would not be in full possession of the facts,” Narf-win-Getag said.
Believe it, Javna thought. “There may have been a misunderstanding of terms,” he said instead, and walked over to hand the glass back to Narf-win-Getag.
“Humph,” the ambassador said, and took his drink. “Very well. Please speak to your man and tell him we are ready for him to bring the woman in to us.”
“He’s out of contact,” Javna said.
“I beg your pardon?” Narf-win-Getag said. “‘Out of contact’? Is that even possible on this planet of yours? Even mountain tribesmen of Papua New Guinea have full-spectrum communicator links. If there’s one thing that distinguishes the human species, it is a pathological need to stay connected. The fact your people will interrupt sex to answer your communicators is a scandal across the entire Common Confederation. So you’ll understand if I am skeptical when you say your man is out of contact.”
“I understand entirely, Mr. Ambassador,” Javna said. “Nevertheless, there it is.”
“Doesn’t he have a communicator?” Narf-win-Getag said.
“He does,” Javna said. “He’s just not answering it.”
“What about the woman?” Narf-win-Getag said. “Surely this Miss Baker has a communicator.”
“She does,” Javna said, noting that the Nidu ambassador knew Baker’s name. “However, hers appears not to be a portable, and she is with our man at the moment.”
“Well, isn’t that interesting,” Narf-win-Getag said. “The only two people on the entire North American continent who cannot be reached in an instant.” He set his glass of scotch down, undrunk. “Ben, I’ll give you the courtesy of not suggesting that you are, in fact, willfully holding out this woman for whatever purpose you might have. But I will let you know that when she does show up, it is my sincere hope that she be surrendered immediately to us. Time is very short now—less than a day before our agreed-upon deadline is reached.”
