Enlightened Ignorance

by Michael Anderle

Remy frowned. “What do you think you know about me?”

  “I know you’re not from around here, and you’ve spent a long time on transports getting here.” Barbu shrugged, an apologetic look on his face. “Not that it matters. I’m sure you have your reasons. I was curious to see how you’d react.”

  “Why?” Remy demanded.

  “Because I don’t rely on machines much, I’m good at judging reactions.” Barbu pointed his bony finger at Remy. “And I can tell in an instant whether I should do business with a man. The truth is, we both know there are certain quality types of equipment only produced in the core worlds. A premium in risk for a premium in quality.” He rubbed his thumb and index finger together. “And a premium in money. I’m sure you understand. I’m taking a big risk here. I do want to do business with you, Mr. Mont, but you also have to understand that business needs to be profitable.”

  Remy reached into his pocket slowly, but Barbu didn’t flinch. He pulled out a small datarod and set it on the counter. “This is the exact order. It’s got a few changes from what was passed onto you. The situation changed after I sent that last request.”

  “Unsurprising.” Barbu pulled the rod behind the counter, out of Remy’s sight. There was a soft click, and a data window appeared above the counter. He whistled. “That’s a lot of product to move on short notice.” He looked up. “I’ve already got good lines on what you initially asked for, but this is going to cost you. You have to understand, moving that much product around up here—upwell instead of downwell on Earth—is risky. Very risky, especially right now. The CID has been on the move because of things that happened in Neo Southern California.”

  “I don’t care about some twisted Earther city.” Remy gave him a sappy smile. “All I need to know is whether you can do it.”

  “I can. For a premium.” Barbu offered him a toothy smile. “A good businessman can do anything for a premium.”

  Remy grunted. He’d expected this. “If you expedite the order, I guarantee you three times the amount we discussed before.”

  “Sounds like you’re planning to start a war.” Barbu chuckled. “I hope you know what you’re doing. This isn’t the colonies, Mr. Mont. This is the Solar System. You start killing people, and the cops will come. They don’t bother certain respectable businessmen because those same respectable businessmen know where and when to push and where and when to back away. But you’re not a respectable businessman. You’re the most dangerous type of man in the UTC.”

  “What type of man is that?” Remy asked, curious.

  “A desperate man unwilling to settle for his situation.”

  Remy’s fingers twitched. Killing Barbu right there might save him from being betrayed, but without the equipment, his plan wouldn’t work, even if the guns were just a means to an end.

  “A war?” Remy muttered. “Something like that. I thought you didn’t care. Is that a problem? A man like you doesn’t make money from moving safe, legal things.”

  Barbu smiled brightly as if he had been given a gift. “No, Mr. Mont, it’s not a problem. I don’t really care, but that doesn’t mean I don’t mind knowing. I’m glad I do.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Haven’t you heard?” Barbu tapped his PNIU, and the data window vanished as he leaned toward the counter.

  “War’s good for business.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  June 1, 2229, Neo Southern California Metroplex, Bar 1849

  Erik shoved through the thick crowd choking the room, mostly people relaxing after work, still in their suits. No one challenged him as he proceeded. Obnoxiously loud music pumped from speakers all over the room. There was even a small group of people dancing in a tiny area lacking tables.

  “This is annoying,” he muttered. “Why did she pick this place? Just to piss me off, I bet. She could have just come to my place again.”

  He’d never visited the bar before, but that wasn’t a surprise. There were a lot of bars in Neo SoCal, and he had a handful he preferred. Finding a good bar was a lot like finding a good woman; a man who was loyal would never be disappointed.

  A few people glanced his way, but there was no sign they recognized him. It must have been the Dragons cap he wore. That was as far as he was going to go for a disguise.

  He didn’t have time to waste time on games.

  A brown-haired woman with a bob cut waved from a corner booth. Her plain gray suit didn’t do much to set her off from any of the dozens of other corporate cogs in the bar trying to unwind. Maybe she recognized him after all. A half-empty glass of dark liquid sat in front of her, and an unopened beer bottle stood across from her despite the lack of company. When he made eye contact, she waved even harder.

  Erik frowned. He didn’t need her drawing attention to him. He went toward the woman. She looked up with a smile, the lines of age crinkling with the expression.

  “You know how easy it is to fool people?” she asked.

  Erik might not recognize the woman’s face, but he recognized the voice: Agent Koval.

  With a chuckle, Erik slid into the booth. He wasn’t surprised when the background noise of the bar died away, leaving merciful quiet. There was no way a ghost was going to have a meeting in public without taking precautions against eavesdropping.

  “Another fancy holographic toy?” Erik asked, gesturing to her face.

  “No. Just a wig, contacts, and some makeup.” Agent Koval tittered, a playful glint in her eyes. “Admittedly higher quality than a lot of people can get their hands on, but nothing impossible for a normal citizen if they’re patient and know where to look. It’s something I learned long ago, and it was a little demonstration to you that it doesn’t take much to conceal yourself, even when someone’s inclined to look for you. The human brain is a pattern-matching machine, and part of that is it doing its best to discard unnecessary information.”

  “You haven’t used much in the way of disguises before,” Erik observed.

  “I’ve done what’s necessary to remove evidence of my presence or interject plausible deniability,” she replied. “That’s all I really need to do.”

  Erik picked up the bottle of beer and pulled the cap off. “I’m assuming this is for me?”

  “It’s not polite to have a chat without refreshment.” Agent Koval picked up her drink and took a sip. She stared at him, an easy smile on her face.

  “Why this place?” Erik motioned to the crowd with his bottle. “This the kind of place you like?”

  “I actually dislike bars. Too many people mean too many variables. I’m sure a man with your life experience can appreciate how that might make me tense.”

  “Yeah, but I thought you would be more paranoid,” Erik admitted. “You’re sitting in this booth, not even watching most of this place. Couldn’t some crazy terrorist pop up and shoot you, or light up this crowd because you’re in here?”

  “Who says I’m not watching the place?” Agent Koval pointed to her eyes. “And there’s not a terrorist left alive who knows who I am. By the time an enemy of the UTC sees my face, it’s too late for them. Anyway, I assure you I’m watching this place from many different angles, and even though I lack an impressive helper such as Emma, I do have a decent threat-evaluation AI filtering information for me.”

  Erik glanced down at his PNIU. He was surprised Emma hadn’t offered a sarcastic comment, given such an obvious opening.

  “You do what you have to do in this sort of situation, and that includes extensive jamming. I’m sure Emma is circling the area, performing scans to make sure you’re not dead.” Agent Koval tilted her head toward the door. “That’s one of the reasons I picked a seat with line of sight to the door. I don’t want her to overreact and do something we’ll both regret.”

  “That’s not the way she works,” Erik explained.

  “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never had an experimental rogue AI as a partner.” The agent flashed a disarming smile, but there was something threatening about her tone.

 
Erik gulped down a quarter of the beer before setting it on the table. “Okay, I’m here. You’ve proven you’re the best little ghost the ID has to offer. The only thing I don’t understand is why I’m here. You said in your message that I was supposed to come by myself, and that makes me suspicious. If you wanted to kill me, I’m guessing you would have done it when I got out of my flitter. With a sniper rifle like you mentioned before.”

  “You might be a coarse man in many ways, but the one thing you’re not is an enemy of the UTC.”

  “And that means what? You kill anyone who threatens the government?”

  Agent Koval chuckled. “The government isn’t the UTC. The UTC is the people who inhabit it.”

  “What if the government tells you to go blow up a transport full of orphans for the good of the UTC?” Erik challenged.

  Agent Koval replied with a savage smile, “Then they better hope they can prove why I shouldn’t kill them.”

  They locked eyes, neither the detective nor the agent saying anything for a long while.

  “I like you, Detective. You’re paranoid, and paranoia is always good for people like us.” Agent Koval shook a finger. “A suspicious man probing dark secrets stays alive much longer. You’ve set out on a nearly impossible task, and like Orpheus diving into the underworld to save Eurydice, you don’t fully appreciate the dangers you face, even though you think you do. It’s both admirable and tragic at the same time.”

  Erik infused his smirk with all the smugness he could muster. “Is that supposed to scare me? People have already tried to kill me. People have arranged terrorist attacks just to get to me. I might get taken out, but I’m willing to keep going until the right people end up dead.”

  “Yes, your enemies have used terrorists to target you. That didn’t give you pause?” She raised an eyebrow in question. “It’s easy to risk your own life. It’s arrogant to risk the lives of others. Are you sure letting yourself be gunned down by a terrorist wouldn’t be safer for everyone?”

  Erik sat back with a grunt. “You believe I haven’t thought about that already?”

  “I don’t know. Have you?” Agent Koval took another sip of her drink. She all but dangled the glass from her fingers. “I’d like to hear your exact thoughts on the matter since your answers might change my attitude.”

  “Will it make me into an enemy of the UTC?”

  Agent Koval’s smile vanished. “It could.”

  “And would you kill me right here?” Erik asked.

  “I am these people’s shield,” Agent Koval replied, a hint of venom in her voice. “The only reason what I do has meaning is because I never sacrifice them for myself.”

  Erik was finally getting to see beneath the mask, if only for a second.

  “Yes, I’ve thought about what you said,” Erik admitted. “I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, and the implications, unfortunately, just push me back to where I started.”

  “Which is?” she pushed.

  “The whole point of all this crap is to find the people responsible for Molino and end them.” Erik tapped his fist on the table a couple of times. “They’re too dangerous. What they did on Molino proves it, and it won’t stop there. It hasn’t stopped there; we both know that. Me lying down to die doesn’t save people. It just means they have a better chance of killing more people.”

  “You’re going to end them?” Agent Koval set her glass down. “You don’t mean bring them to justice, do you?”

  Erik snorted. “You’re not that naïve. The kind of people who can pull off incidents like that isn’t going to be brought alive to some courthouse for trial. Your people barely have a handle on Talos. It doesn’t matter if they’re the brains or the muscle. They’re sending full-conversion Tin Men out to kill people, and the best and brightest of the UTC can barely keep up with them. The conspiracy has its fingers everywhere. Yeah, we can get a good chief here and there, but we can’t end this while staying totally within the system. I came to terms with that before I left Molino.”

  “What a strange comment for a cop to make. You really are shaping up to be a tragic hero. I suppose that’s why I can’t resist the urge to help you. It’s a weakness.”

  “Don’t feed me that.” Erik looked over at the people dancing. The noise was just a few inches away from the booth. “You just want to use me. People come after me, and they end up dead. If it’s Talos or someone like that, then you have me doing your work for you. Isn’t that the real reason you tested me in the apartment?”

  She eyed him. “Partly, but isn’t all of society people helping other people for mutual advantage?” Agent Koval injected playfulness into her tone.

  “You still haven’t told me why I’m here,” Erik growled, annoyed by her attitude.

  “I’m here to make a deal, and I hope you’re here to accept the deal.” Agent Koval spread her hands in front of her. “A deal that’s mutually beneficial to both our needs, which, at least for the moment, align, and which I anticipate aligning for some time. You’re right, Detective Blackwell. I’m not that naïve. If you end up finding the source of the conspiracy that killed your soldiers and take your revenge with that old-fashioned but deadly gun of yours, the net result will be a better UTC. Corruption has become so endemic that a lot of people forget it’s not business as usual. They just consider it background noise. That’s a problem, and that’s where our deal comes in.”

  Erik chuckled. “Is this the part where you ask for my soul? I’m not sure I’ll say no as long as I can get my revenge.”

  “No souls.” Agent Koval chuckled. “That’s not my department. What I am willing to offer is an agreement wherein, going forward, I’ll send along information from the Intelligence Directorate that relates to the Molino incident. In a sense, you’d have UTC intelligence working for you on your personal crusade. I can’t guarantee it’ll come to you instantly, but it will get to you.”

  He’d hoped for something like that but thought he would never get it.

  The limits of being a cop had become apparent in recent months but having a direct line to government intelligence was beyond anything he could have imagined. Even Emma couldn’t risk cracking their systems directly.

  “That’s pretty generous.” Erik kept his voice as calm as possible.

  “There’s no generosity here, but this isn’t a King Midas situation.” Agent Koval leaned back, her breathing shallow. “I’ll need you to do something for me. Something for something—that’s the way of the world.”

  “And what’s my something in this situation?”

  A bright grin popped onto Agent Koval’s face. “All I want you to do is go on vacation.”

  “Huh?” Erik’s face scrunched in confusion. “What are you talking about? Don’t waste my time.”

  “You’ve been with the department long enough to earn enough time off for what I have in mind,” Agent Koval replied. “And you haven’t taken a vacation since joining the department. I know your captain has provided you a few extra days off as bonus time, but I’m talking official vacation for more than a day or two.”

  “I’ve been too busy hunting to take vacations.”

  Agent Koval kept her smile on her face, but the look around her eyes turned vicious and predatory. “Good. That’s what I want you to do while on vacation; hunt for me, Blackwell. Different sources of information point to unusual activity on the moon centered around Chang’e City. I’d like you to go up and poke around and see what you come up with. You’ve already demonstrated the combination of stubbornness, arrogance, and luck that helps you ferret out low-level conspiracies, and I think you’ll be able to do that there as well.”

  Erik shrugged. “That sounds like cop stuff. Why not contact the locals? If not the cops, then the CID. What good will sending me up there do? Doesn’t the ID have people sitting around everywhere, too?

  She eyed him. “That’s a common misunderstanding. Detective, there are so many CID agents and police because they are involved in active evidence collectio
n and shows of force, among other things. It’s also to ensure at least a half-functioning police department, even with all the corruption. The nature of the Intelligence Directorate’s work necessitates a greater reliance on agents. Meaning it’s harder to recruit, and our operational areas are of a wider scope. Even the CID, despite technically having authority throughout the UTC, ends up relying heavily on locals once they leave Earth. The truth is, my directorate is spread thin over the colonies, and even then, we’re bound by certain restrictions.”

  She sighed. “One of the reasons I’m interested in sending a vacationing cop to Chang’e City is because there has been a major uptick in obvious arms smuggling, and there’s no way that would happen without corrupt locals choosing to look the other way or accepting bribes for the same. My information suggests something dangerous might be coming in, but I don’t know much more, which means I don’t have time to play with cleaning up Chang’e.”

  “What you’re saying is you want me to run around making noise until I flush scumbags out of the shadows, and when they come after me, you want me to take them down.” He tapped his bottle on the table. “Is this another test?”

  “In a way.” Agent Koval’s expression turned thoughtful. “And that’s a succinct summary of an acceptable end scenario.”

  He continued. “You want me to investigate, but from what I can tell, you don’t want me to involve the locals.”

  “That’s also an accurate understanding of the situation.”

  “I’m a cop, not a mercenary.” Erik frowned. “This could blow up in my face easily, and you know it.”

  Agent Koval looked down for a moment, her brow furrowing in concentration. “Then let me offer another acceptable end scenario. You use those unerring bloodhound instincts to pinpoint the trouble for me, and then I’ll fly up CID reinforcements from Earth to supplement the agents who are known to be clean. They can handle the final arrests. Sound fair?”

  “CID?” Erik narrowed his eyes. Everything the ghost did made him second-guess her. “Why not ID?”