Wanted

by Laurence E. Dahners

  “Are you at all interested in what compromises Donsaii might be willing to make?”

  “Sure, as long as they include a surrender to authority and her turning over D5R’s interstellar technology to the government.”

  “She says she won’t release the interstellar tech to anyone. She feels it’s too dangerous.” Hoyt studied Stockton a moment. “Why do you feel she must turn that over? Couldn’t she just provide the ‘star shots’ so to speak, without turning the tech over to us?”

  “If it’s that dangerous, then it needs to be under governmental control. A loose cannon like Donsaii should not be the one person in the world controlling such technology.”

  “A secret known by more than one person is no longer a secret.”

  “Spare me your pithy quotes.”

  Hoyt crossed her arms, “You know, you’re almost all alone out here in your dislike of Donsaii. Even the people who lost their jobs because of her still idolize her. She’s performed astonishing services to the human race. I predict your little vendetta is going to cost the party its majority and the Presidency come the next election.”

  “That election is three and a half years from now. I’ll admit that bimbo’s been in the right place at the right time several times. But her luck’s going to run out sometime soon and then everyone’s going to realize that she’s not the lily white perfect little angel they’ve thought. When shit finally starts sticking to her, people are going to ask how ol’ Stockton saw through that airheaded, self-serving little witch before everyone else did.”

  “I’ll remind you that that ‘lucky bimbo’ showed us at least three major new technologies the night we tried to capture her.” Hoyt shook her head, “Let me know if you ever come to your senses,” she said in a disgusted tone, then turned and left without saying goodbye.

  Watching her go, Stockton musingly said, “Three?” while gazing distractedly at one of her Secret Service agents.

  After a moment the man said, “Flying, cutting glass with a finger, force fields.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Stockton waved a hand dismissively. “Party tricks and sleight of hand. Anyway, I wasn’t talking to you.”

  ***

  York’s hair prickled as he watched the video of “Donsaii, AKA Raquel” dancing at some bar in Las Vegas five years ago. Damn! She had a false identity five years ago? How could we have missed that for all this time! He wondered if it was a true false identity with ID chips, searchable on databases, or just a costume she put on to go out in public without getting hassled. “When did we get this tip?”

  The technical specialist who’d brought it to him said, “It was submitted three days ago out in Vegas.”

  “Three days! You’ve been sitting on this for three days?”

  “Hey, it took this long for it to float to the top of all the total crap we’re getting. There are thousands of sightings in every shithole in the world!” She sighed, “You know, every teenage girl, and some boys are dressing and wearing their hair like Donsaii. They think they’ve scored big if they get reported to us and we check them out. Some kids are turning themselves in.”

  “Jesus,” York said, irritably adjusting the sling on his injured shoulder. “Well, I don’t imagine she’s still using that identity, but do an image search for that face and the name Raquel anyway. We’ll need to invest even more time searching for look alikes now.”

  ***

  Raquel’s little old Chevy Colorado pickup bumped along a road that was no more than a couple of ruts through the forest. Shan was driving because GPS guidance for this trail wouldn’t exist until they’d been up it the first time. Glancing at Ell he said, “You know, it’s kind of exhilarating driving in manual when you know that the AI has no idea what’s happening and can’t bail you out if you do something stupid.”

  “Yeah, at least we’re going really slow. Can you imagine the old days when everyone drove everywhere manually at highway speeds, drunk, sleepy and inattentive?”

  “I guess that wouldn’t be so exhilarating, huh? Even if you were on your game, the guy in the car coming toward you might be an idiot.”

  “Turn right at this fork.”

  “How many acres is this? Seems like we’ve been driving forever.”

  “109 acres. The whole thing’s a little less than a half mile by a half mile so it isn’t really very far. You just aren’t used to going this slow… and crooked.”

  “Shouldn’t we be at the cabin by now? I didn’t think it took this long last time.”

  “Well, I’m taking you to the site of our new project first to unload all the supplies out of the back. Then we’ll go back to the cabin.”

  “Our new project? When did I get any input on this project?”

  “When I said I was coming up here to make some changes and you volunteered yourself as an assistant and general go-fer.”

  “Hey, by my recollection I was ‘going with,’ not submitting myself to be your roustabout and general unskilled labor.”

  “Surely sir, you wouldn’t want your wife to be working hard in her delicate condition!”

  “Oh Jeez!” The truck heaved to a stop at the end of the trail. They were next to a massive formation of granite that thrust out of the forest floor. Shan looked up at it, “That’s one huge chunk of rock. How many of my 109 acres are actually rock and not land?”

  Ell grinned at him, “About three. This granite is the biggest reason I wanted this parcel of land.”

  “Really? Are you planning to go into the quarry business or something?”

  “Nope, but you wanna see something cool?”

  “If your tummy wasn’t so big you’d be bouncing up and down wouldn’t you? Sure, show me.”

  They got out of the truck and Ell led Shan to the rock and into a large crevice that extended up into the granite formation then turned to the left. The crack tilted a little to the right so that the left side of the massif hung over them a little. The light was pretty dim back there but Shan couldn’t see anything that would have Ell so excited. “Do we need some light?” he asked.

  “Sure,” she said and the small lights on her headset came on, lighting the area.

  Shan turned his on too, but after casting them here and there still had no idea what she thought was exciting back here. It just seemed like a deep crack in the rock. He glanced down at Ell and saw she’d gotten some kind of tool out of her pocket. She grinned up at him and said, “Ready?”

  He nodded, “Sure, what…”

  A whooshing sucking sound came from the tool and, as Ell extended it to the rock, a fine line appeared in the granite just ahead of her hand. She quickly traced out an irregular area somewhat smaller than the size of an ordinary house door on the left side of the crevice where a relatively flat rock face was sloping slightly toward her. “Voila! A door into our rock house! Do you want to open it?”

  Feeling silly, Shan stepped forward and pushed on the outlined door. Nothing happened.

  “Oops.” Ell giggled, “Perhaps we need to free the door from the rock behind it?” Ell stepped forward again. This time she ran the tool carefully back and forth over the entire surface of the door she’d marked on the rock.

  When she stepped back this time and Shan pushed hard on the area of the rock that Ell had marked out, it shifted inward a little. “What the hell!” Shan said, staring at the large piece of rock that had just moved. “How did you do that?”

  “Pretty cool huh?” Ell said wistfully. “Unfortunately, scary as hell too.” I’ve figured out how to open single ended ports at angles other than parallel to the originating port.” She put her hand on the rock and pushed as well. It didn’t move the door any further. She frowned at it.

  Shan tilted his head curiously, “You mean…”

  Ell turned back to him, “So normally,” she held up the tool she’d been using, “when I open a single port, like this one at twelve inches.” A two inch port popped open in space about 12 inches from her tool. “The port out there,” Ell pointed at it with her
other hand, “opens parallel to the one here in my tool that originated it.” The port disappeared and reappeared slightly closer. “Which is usually fine if you’re just using the port to send objects through space to that point. But recently I’ve been taking advantage of the fact that a port that opens inside of something cuts through any material it opens inside.”

  Shan’s eyes widened.

  Ell continued, “I’m pretty sure I told you we’ve been using that phenomenon to cut chunks of that asteroid we’re mining into little pieces to send them back to earth, though we’re using double ended ports for that.”

  Shan nodded with dawning comprehension.

  “So, here I’ve changed the angle of the distant port,” the port disappeared and reappeared at about a ninety degree angle, “and sped up how often it opens and closes.” The port gained a fuzzy texture as it began opening and closing five hundred times a second. “Now I’m going to have it open closer and farther away at a high speed also.” The blurry spot extended itself so that it extended over a ten inch distance from twelve to twenty-two inches away from her tool. She moved it so that it passed through a deadfall limb stuck across the crevice in the granite, parting the wood easier than a razor might go through tissue paper.

  Shan breathed, “That’ll cut through anything won’t it?”

  Ell nodded, “Diamond or steel just as easy as butter or balsa. This tool has several different sized ports so I cut around the edges of the door with a four millimeter port set at a ninety degree angle and plunging to a depth of thirty millimeters. That produced that fine thin cut around the edge of the door. If I spin the port it actually cuts loose a spherical area.” She grinned, “It acts kind of like a router. I used the five centimeter port, spinning while tilted at sixty degrees and set at a distance of two centimeters to cut the door loose from the underlying granite.” She twisted a lip, “Two centimeter thick granite is too heavy for a good door though. She glanced up at her HUD, “I should have done the calculation before I cut the thing out: it probably weighs around 200 pounds! And if I make it thinner it’ll be too easy to break. Got any ideas for a different kind of door that would still be easy to disguise?”

  Shan frowned distractedly, “Why does it make that whooshing sound?”

  “Well, I have two way ports right behind the single ports in the tool. The other ends of the double ports are out in the vacuum of deep space so this thing also sucks up the dust and swarf from the cutting as it goes. The vacuum out there is so hard, the two way port is only open part of each second to keep from sucking in things we don’t want going through the cutter.”

  Shan stared at it, trying to get his head around the whole concept. “Jeez, Ell this could be amazing for construction! Are you sure you couldn’t sell a version that could only be used for cutting things like tunnels, etcetera?”

  Ell looked at him for a minute then quietly said. “It could also be used to cut right through skyscrapers. A terrorist could go around ‘logging buildings’ in New York City.”

  Shan’s eyes widened, “Oh! Shit! Yeah, I guess you ought to keep these to yourself.”

  Ell nodded, “Hey, let’s unload that stuff out of the back of the truck and head back to the cabin. Tomorrow we’ll come out here and cut out a little rock cave hideaway. Tonight we can try to figure out how to make a door no one will be able to see or open.”

  The summer evening was cool in the mountains, so they built a little fire out of deadfall branches and sat out beside it, Shan drinking a beer and Ell her caffeine free Coke.

  Shan felt very relaxed. “I could run into town and get a sheet of plywood. Then you could cut that rock down into no more than a thin lamination and we could glue it to the plywood.”

  “How ‘bout if you got an actual door with hinges and all? It’d be thicker and studier than plywood. Not so prone to warping. We can trim it to fit with the world’s ultimate saw there.” She pointed to her single port tool. “I think we need the thickness because the lower right corner the rock dips back a little so we’ll have to cut away some of the wood beneath it.”

  “Done. You can cut out your little house in the rocks while I’m doing up the door.”

  The next morning, when Shan got back with the door he stared around at the huge cavity Ell had created in just a morning. More a series of cavities, like a house with a somewhat random floor plan. “I thought you said a ‘little’ rock hideaway?”

  Ell grinned at him, “Well, I haven’t used the entire three acres of granite yet, but I think I’m closing in on a nice emergency hideaway. Let’s look at your plan for the door.”

  He looked around a little, “Haven’t you been working a little too hard for a woman in your delicate condition?”

  Ell shrugged, “I just carry this thing around, pointing it at rock and watching it disappear. My feet are getting tired, so I did a lot of the last room sitting on our camp toilet, but it isn’t like I’m working hard.”

  They went back to the entrance where Ell shaved the piece of granite from the opening much thinner. Then they glued it to the exterior door Shan brought back from Lowe’s hardware. Then Ell gradually trimmed away the rock next to the door until they had a good location for the hinges to be epoxied to the granite.

  While they waited for the epoxy to set, they opened the boxes containing their camp toilets sinks and showers, supplied by Shan’s Dad. He’d really gotten into the business of manufacturing and selling outdoors equipment that used ports. First with the clothing that could cool you or keep you warm but later with these camp toilets that flushed with water from a port, into a sewer port. The sinks and showers worked the same way.

  They opened boxes containing some of Malcolm Kinrais’ space air conditioners as well, putting one in each of the big rooms of the connected set of cavities in the granite.

  The next day they opened the door and looked at it from the outside. Because the crack where Ell had cut it loose was infinitesimally thin except where she’d turned corners with the cutter, it should have been barely visible. In fact it would have been too tight to slide open if she hadn’t sloped the cut outward when she made it so that it could be pushed inward. They’d only been able to open the door initially by removing a lot of material from behind it, then pushing it in, tilting it and pulling it out with the narrow dimension coming out through the wide dimension. However, the hinges didn’t drop it quite perfectly into place, leaving the surface of the door a tiny bit less prominent than the surrounding rock along one edge.

  Ell trimmed the outer surface of the surrounding rock and door edge where it wasn’t perfectly level, smoothing it off until the crack at the edges could barely be seen. Unfortunately, this left them with an area of freshly cut granite that stood out in comparison to the weathered granite next to it.

  They rubbed dirt and moss onto the newly cut surface of the granite, hoping it would soon look more like the granite in the surrounding area. Shan looked at it, then said, “If you want to hide it better, just cut away the outer layers of some of the other rocks around here so this one won’t be the only one with a freshly cut surface.”

  Agreeing that it would be a good idea, Ell went around, randomly cutting away a few millimeters of the outer surface of the granite in big and small patches while Shan rubbed dirt and moss on them behind her.

  That night, as they were packing to leave in the morning, Allan said, “You have a call from Steve.”

  “I’ll take it… Steverino! How’s it going?”

  Steve answered in a whisper, “The FBI’s here at our houses arresting everyone on the team.”

  Ell’s heart skipped a beat, “No! On what grounds?”

  “Aiding and abetting a fugitive,” Steve whispered.

  “Oh, man…” Ell trailed off, “Do you know who all they’re arresting?”

  “As near as I can tell it’s everyone on your personal payroll. Essentially, the entire security team plus Amy. They probably pulled the list from our income tax records.”

  “My God,
who’s going to take care of her kids? She doesn’t have any relatives to take them!”

  “They were going to put them in foster care but Amy got Bridget to pick them up, she babysat for them when they were younger so they know her.”

  “How do you want to… deal with this?”

  There was a knocking sound and Steve said, “I won’t be able to talk much longer, they took our headbands and I’m using my implants but I’ll look like I’m talking to myself once I leave this bathroom. I’ll talk to you again when I can.”

  “OK, I’m not going to ask you anything, so you can leave the bathroom. I’m going to tell you the options as I see them. First, that I can have the legal team that’s battling the government for me, take them on for you too. Second, that you could hire your own legal counsel so it doesn’t look so much like you’re associated with me. I’d repay your expenses later. Third, I could break you out of jail and leave you fugitives like myself. You might talk amongst yourselves about which you want to do, though number two seems best to me. Contact me when you can.”

  Shan said, “They arrested Steve?”

  Ell threw her arms around him. “And all the rest of my security team. And Amy, even though she’d quit working for me personally and taken a job at D5R!”

  “Oh, man,” Shan said sadly, holding her. “Shall we leave tonight to get back down there?”

  “Gods, I so want to get down there and do something.” She sniffed and knuckled an eye, “But I have a feeling that’s just what it’s intended for—to smoke me out. I’ll bet they’re dragging out the arrest process just in hopes that I’ll show up and try to do something about it. Then they’ll have done exactly what they set out to accomplish.” She turned in his arms to look up at him, “And I certainly wouldn’t want you to get dragged into it.”

  “Hey, don’t cry,” Shan patted her shoulder, feeling helpless. He’d never seen Ell really upset. She always seemed to encounter problems with a solution half figured out. He wiped a tear off her cheek, “We’ll figure out how to help them and get ourselves through this somehow.”