"You're an angel," Maj's mother said, and turned around to kiss him soundly, holding her sticky-gloved hands up and away like a surgeon avoiding becoming nonsterile.
"I'll go with you," Maj said.
Her father smiled slightly, but there was just a little something missing about the smile. "Going to lay down the law early, huh?"
"I might not need to," Maj said, and smiled. "But if he starts acting up, well, better get the corrective measures started right away."
Her father chuckled and turned to head back down the hall to the bedroom end of the house. "Let me change out of this shirt," he said. "If there's anything else that needs to be washed, make a pile in the hall. Muffin, you ready...?"
Maj went to get herself a mug for her tea, and went fishing in the canister on the window for a teabag, while for the moment keeping her face turned away from her mother's. What's going on...? she wondered. It wasn't that sudden guests from strange places were unusual. In this house, they weren't.
What wasn't usual was her father looking afraid....
"There is nothing we can do at the moment," said the tense voice down the other end of the comm line. "We caught the 'identity shifts' they pulled, finally...but too late. He's gone."
In the plain, bare little office, with its two pieces of steel furniture and the peeling beige paint on the walls, Major Elye Arni swore softly under her breath. Outside the office, things got very quiet. Her assistants knew better than to bother her at such times. "How did it happen?"
"Apparently someone got him fake ID that was good enough to get through our border systems. Then the boy was picked up and taken out of immediate surveillance range by an escort previously unknown to us."
"He'll be known now, though," she said, her voice grim with threat.
"Oh, yes, Major, we'll have him shortly," said the voice on the other end of comms.
He would have to say that, the major thought...both out of fear of what she would be thinking, and from fear of who was probably listening somewhere else on the line. It was always assumed, and wisely, that someone Higher Up was listening to whatever you were discussing, and even at times when she knew this not to be true, the major did not dissuade any of her associates from believing it. It was healthy for them to be scared. It kept them honest. Or as honest as they were capable of being.
"We'll see," Major Arni said. "I tell you, I don't know where all these subversives keep coming from. You'd think we'd have shaken them all out, after twenty years, but no...Ingrates. So where exactly is the boy now?"
"Over the mid-Atlantic. He'll be landing in a couple of hours."
"And you'll have someone to meet him at the other end, I take it."
"Oh, of course, Major. It's just that--" He sounded suddenly unnerved.
"Just that what?"
"Well," said her subordinate, "we can't just grab him at the airport, I'm afraid. Their security is too tight."
She started to get annoyed. "Surely the airport security people don't know anything about him that would alert them to any need for extra vigilance! He's just a boy. And not even the son of anyone particularly important."
"No, it's not that, Major, of course they don't know about him." Her subordinate was flustered. "But the Western countries are all so paranoid about their children being kidnapped, or snatched by parents feuding over a divorce settlement, or by some prowling sex maniac, that a child in transit can't be turned over to anyone but the person they've been 'sent' to. The airlines are strict about it. There have been lawsuits, and they--"
"If you think I have time to waste hearing about the mendacities of some corrupt Western legal system," the major said, "you're much mistaken. Send someone who can pass for the person picking the boy up."
"Major, we can't; the authorities there will be checking the collecting adult's ID by retinal scan."
She swore again. There were ways to fake that, these days, but not in time, and this little fish didn't justify that kind of expense...yet. "Who exactly is picking the boy up?"
"We think it must be someone involved with one of the national intelligence organizations, Major. Why Washington, otherwise?"
She wasn't convinced. "They could pick him up anywhere," the major muttered. "It wouldn't necessarily have to be there." She brooded for a moment. "Does the father possibly know anybody in that area?"
"It's a possibility. He studied there for a while," said her subordinate.
The major frowned. "In America? What was a loyal scientist from our country doing there?"
"Please, Major, it's all too common. He was sent there by the government years ago, some student exchange program, to 'learn about their culture'--"
"To poach their science, you mean," she growled, "and to give their damned intelligence services a chance to try and suborn him." Still, she knew this kind of thing had gone on a lot in the last thirty years--people being sent overseas to get at the improved equipment and theory which the Western countries had refused to allow her country to import honestly, citing "human rights record problems" and other fabricated excuses to keep their enemies poor and technologically inferior. Well, in this particular case, it hadn't worked. The CIA and its cluster of other associated intelligence agencies had hit Darenko and bounced. He simply wasn't interested in being a double agent, it seemed...too interested in just doing science. And now Darenko's work was proving unusually useful for the government. Everything about it had seemed to be going extremely well, there had been great hopes for the results of his newest research...until now.
The major felt like growling a lot louder. You gave people better than usual housing and salaries, rewarded them with high position and the favor of the government and the national defense establishments, and what did they do? Turn on you at the first opportunity. What does he mean sending his son off to the West like this? Except she knew perfectly well what was meant by it. He was getting ready to jump, and--smart man that he was--he knew that sending his son off alone increased their chances of a reunion later. Together, their escape would have been almost impossible. Yet by sending the boy away, he had also telegraphed his own intentions. He would shortly find out how big an error that had been.
She let out a long breath. "Well," Major Arni said, "what do you know about the person picking him up?"
"Uh...nothing as yet."
The major's eyes narrowed. "You must be able to find out something! There must be information about the person's identity attached to the boy's ticketing information in the airline's computers."
"We tried that," her subordinate said. "Unfortunately we couldn't hack into the ticketing system. The air ticket 'audit trail' starts in Zurich, and the Swiss computers' encryption--"
"I don't want to hear about their encryption!" she yelled. "Damned paranoid Swiss, why are they so secretive?" She let out a long breath of annoyance. "Stupid little mob of hold-up-your-hand-and-vote democrats--"
The major bit off the diatribe, which would have served no purpose, and would just have re-inflamed slightly raw nerves anyway. Some months ago someone from her department had been caught bugging the new French Embassy building in Bern and had been ejected by the Swiss within six hours. No appeal, no chance to get someone in there to finish the job, just a lot of embarrassment which she was still living down. She was fortunate not to have been reassigned, and the incident still rankled. Meanwhile, the terrified silence at the other end of the phone was amusing.
"All right," she said at last. "Fine. I don't suppose you have anyone on the plane, someone who could get cozy with one of the flight attendants and get a look at the boy's travel documents?"
"Uh, no, Major. On such short notice we couldn't get the disbursements office to authorize the funds for a 'jump' flight. That kind of expense, they want an application filed in sextuplicate a month beforehand." He sounded bitter and didn't bother concealing it. And this time the major was inclined to agree with him, though he really had no business complaining about it to her. One of the perpetual annoyances of her job
was the tiny budget on which she was required to produce decent results. How am I supposed to defend the security of my country on a shoestring? But hard currency was just that, hard to come by, and there was no one she could complain to, either, not without hurting her own position, for such complaints were likely to be taken as evidence of insufficient motivation, or (much worse) incipient treachery.
She sighed. "So what you're telling me," the major said, "is that all we can do is watch to see who picks the boy up at the Washington end. And if it's the CIA, or Net Force, or some other government organization, then that's the end of everything, is it?"
"Oh, no, Major. Even they get clumsy sometimes. One slip in their security is all we need." She could hear him almost smiling a little on the other end of the link, and maybe he was right to do so. "And besides, his father has to try to follow shortly. The 'collectors' on that side themselves are likely to tip us off, just by whatever preparations they make. When the father does try to follow, we'll catch him and squeeze him dry. He'll certainly know where the boy was headed. Either way, we'll have them both back in short order...or make them useless to the other side."
"You'd better hope it works out that way," the major said. "I want a report as soon as that plane comes down. Who picked him up, who they work for, where they take him. I want him taken back at the earliest opportunity. And, Taki--make a note--if anyone slips and kills him, they'll be just as dead within hours. This isn't just some schoolboy. We need him intact."
"Ah," said the voice on the other end. "Pressure..."
"Oh, certainly. What father likes to see his son's fingernails pulled off with pliers in front of him?" said the major idly. "Though I doubt we'd have to do more than one or two. And if the boy turns out to be innocent, of course we'd compensate him afterward. The Government has to defend itself from spies and terrorists, but it doesn't prey on innocent citizens."
"Of course," said the voice on the other end, rather hurriedly. "Will there be anything else, Major?"
"Just that report in two hours, or when the plane comes down, whichever comes sooner. See to it."
He hurriedly clicked off. She put down the comm hand-piece at her end.
Innocent citizens, the major thought. Are there any?
Personally, she doubted it. It was just as well. It made her job easier.
She looked out the office door. None of her staff were stirring. "Come on," she said, raising her voice, "look lively out there! Rosa, I want the schedules for the American Aerospace planes into Reagan and Dulles and BWI for the next six hours. With the 'possible diversion' variants. Check the weather to see if a diversion is likely at all. And get me the last list of our Washington assets--"
Out in the office she could hear them starting to bustle around again. She sat there for a few moments more in silence--a little slender blond-haired woman in uniform, her hair pulled back in the regulation twist, her hands folded, looking thoughtful. Ingrate, she was thinking again. A pity they need you alive.
Though, once they make sure we've got all your work complete, it's not as if you're likely to be that way for long....
2
For Maj, the previous evening had pretty much been routine. Maj's mom and dad left at eight-thirty for the PTA dinner, with Maj's mother bearing before her an astonishingly detailed and complete medieval castle rendered in sugar plate, right down (or up) to small spun-sugar banners flying from toothpicks fixed in the battlements. The Muffin went off to play in virtual space until bedtime, and Maj sat at the kitchen table for a good while, snacking on a pomegranate while going through her piled-up e-mail and occasionally looking out of her own work space through a "side door" she had installed into Muffin's virtual "play area," a large green woodland meadow which at the moment was populated by a number of deinonichuses, iguanas, and very small stegosaurs. In the middle of this pastoral landscape the Muffin was sitting on a large smooth rock and reading to the assorted saurians, very slowly, carefully sounding out the words. "...And the great serpent said, 'What has brought thee to this island, little one? Speak quickly, and if thou dost not ac-quaint me with something I have not heard, or knew not before, thou shalt van-...vanish like a flame--'"
Maj smiled and turned her attention back to the electronic mail that "lay" all over the kitchen table, or bobbled around in the air in front of her in the form of various brightly colored three-dimensional icons. A lot of it was in the form of shiny black spheres about baseball-size, with the number 7 flashing inside it--mail from her friends in that wildly assorted loose association, the "Group of Seven." There were actually a lot more than seven of them, now, but as a group they were too lazy to bother changing the number every time someone new joined. They had other things to think about--one of them, at the moment, being the new sim that presently had a lot of other people on the Net interested as well.
Maj and the other members of the Group had originally started getting together on a regular basis because they were all interested in designing their own "sims"--simulated realities, "playrooms" or "pocket universes" based in the Net, where you could lose an hour or a week engaged in conversation, or combat, with other people--a few of them or thousands. For a lucky few with the necessary talent and perseverance, it could become a career, an incredibly lucrative one, and some of the Group of Seven had this kind of future in mind for themselves. They designed sims and let the rest of the Group play with them, "test-driving" them and working out the kinks. It was "practicing for the real world" for these kids. Others, like Maj, just liked to play "inside" small custom-designed sims rather than the big glossy ones, which tended to be expensive.
But every now and then one came along that caused an unusual amount of interest. Cluster Rangers was one of these. It was a space sim--the latest of what, over the course of the life of the Net, had probably been thousands of space-oriented games, puzzles, and virtual environments. But there was something rather special about this one. It wasn't just that Mihail Oranief, the sim designer, had taken incredible care over the details of it, which by itself was hardly unusual. It was a big, juicy, complex game, full of interesting solar systems, weird alien races, and interesting characters having interesting (and occasionally fatal) conflicts with one another.
Cluster Rangers had a couple of additional attractions that had seemed to drop out of a lot of space sims, or were never in them at all. For one thing, it was very interactive. Not just in the obvious sense, that you got into it and lived it for hours at a time. But Oranief had seen fit to release his "interface code," the "modular" programming which would allow players to design their own spacecraft, space stations, even their own planets, and "plug them into" the Cluster Rangers universe.
This by itself was both a courtesy and a challenge--the sign of a very assured and confident programmer who was willing to let people come into his universe and make it better than even he had thought to. And that had powerfully attracted Maj and most of the rest of the Seven--all eleven of them. For some weeks now they had jointly been engaged in the design of a small squadron of fighter craft which would make their debut at the upcoming Battle of Didion, presently scheduled for tomorrow night.
All of them were determined to make a splash, and they had come up with what they considered the ultimate small fighter craft for exploiting the laws of science as the sim designer had laid them down. There were some big differences there from the average virtual universe. Light speed was much lower, and the human body could stand more G's, but to Maj's mind, the most amusing change was that, though vacuum there was vacuum, it also was allowed to conduct sound--and when you blew something up, you heard the BOOM! without breaking any rules. There were people who despised this warping of conventional physical reality as excessive whimsy. For her own part, Maj was willing to cut the sim designers a small amount of slack. She liked the booms.
But ship design was what was primarily occupying her and the rest of the Group at the moment. All these mails now piled up on Maj's "desk" involved last-minute changes to the craft--
suggestions and alterations, ideas picked up and immediately discarded, rude remarks about other people's ideas (or one's own), bad jokes, fits of nervousness or excitement, and various expressions of scorn, panic, or self-satisfaction. The Group had picked a side to align itself with in the Battle, had made some new friends and some new enemies, and was, Maj judged, pretty much ready to get out there now and go head-to-head with some of the Archon's "Black Arrow" squadrons. Their own "Arbalest" ships were both effective and handsome--a point about which, considering the quality of the rest of the game, Maj had had some concern.
Most designers who simply adapted astronomical photos from the Hubble and Alpher-Bethe-Gamow Space Telescopes for their scenarios wound up, despite the sometimes spectacular nature of the images, with backgrounds that looked hard and cold. Maj wasn't sure what Oranief had done to his "exteriors," but they somehow looked hard and warm. It was an unusual distinction, this ability to make space, already beautiful enough, look even more so, to make blackness more than just black, but also dark and mysterious, and either threateningly so-so that you looked over your shoulder nervously while you were flying--or kindly so, so that you hung there in the darkness with a feeling that something approved of you being there. However Oranief did it, the effect of Cluster Rangers, the sense of depth in a game, of it all meaning more somehow than it looked as if it did, was like nothing else on the Net, and people had been flocking to join the sim as a result. Maj was glad that she and the Group had gotten in early, since there was talk of the designer closing down admissions soon and limiting the number of users to those who had already signed up.
She sighed and put the last mail aside, a panicky voice-mail from Bob, who had been complaining that he wasn't sure the camber of the wings on the Arbalest craft was deep enough. Maj recognized this for what it was--last-minute nerves. "Mail routine," she said.
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