Second Contact

by Mike Resnick

  “The only thing we know is going on is that you were purposely misled after you spoke to Jennings. The reasons may be conjecture, but the fact remains.”

  “Therefore,” Becker responded, “the question is: why was I misled? I must have learned something from him.”

  “You did.”

  “But what?”

  “You know what.”

  “It's too far-fetched to even consider,” said Becker irritably.

  “I keep telling you: look at it logically. When did you learn whatever it is that you're not supposed to know? When you spoke to Jennings, because that's when they started manipulating witnesses in earnest.”

  “I have no problem with that,” said Becker. “Just with the information you think I learned.”

  “You didn't let me finish,” noted Jaimie.

  “All right,” he said. “Finish.”

  “When did they try to kill you? After you found out that they were misleading you.”

  “So?”

  “So why didn't they try to kill you the minute you walked out of Jennings’ hospital room? Whatever he told you could be transmitted to hundreds of others by nightfall. You could have told the press, the military, anyone you wanted.” She paused, then continued triumphantly. “The reason has to be that whatever you learned was so far-fetched, so unbelievable, that you gave it no credence until you learned that they were misdirecting you.”

  “Shit,” said Becker softly.

  “What is it?”

  “You make it sound so ... so sensible,” he said. “But it isn't. It's the craziest thing I've ever heard.”

  “Did Jennings strike you as crazy?” she asked. “You've always told me that he seemed as sane as your friend Magnussen.”

  “Let me think,” said Becker, and Jaimie fell silent, watching him intently. He remained motionless for almost a full minute, then looked up at her. “It's a possibility,” he admitted with a deep sigh.

  “Well, that's a start,” she replied. “At least you're not calling it crazy anymore.”

  “But I've got to talk to Jennings again,” he continued. “I've got to find out if he's sincere about changing his plea, or if they've somehow bought or scared him off.”

  “That's not gonna be easy to do,” said Jaimie. “They'll have him locked up under heavy security—and I'd be very surprised if every single employee and guard in Bethesda wasn't walking around with a hologram of you in his pocket.”

  “Still, I've got to see him once more.”

  “Does he have a phone or a computer in his room?”

  Becker shook his head. “Just a holovision.”

  “I could intercept one of the local signals and put you on the screen,” she said, “but there's no guarantee he'd be turned to that channel—and even if he was, there's no way we could receive his reply.” She considered the possibilities, then shook her head. “No, even if I could get around that, I'd have to use so much power that they'd have us located inside of a minute.” She paused again. “Maybe I could go to Bethesda.”

  “No,” said Becker adamantly. “They may be clumsy, but they're not stupid. By now they must know that you're involved. They'll be on the lookout for you as well as me.”

  She shrugged. “Well, it was a thought.”

  “A bad one.”

  “So what do you intend to do?”

  “I can't get to Jennings until after the trial,” said Becker. “Once they put him in a home somewhere, maybe I can sneak in and see him.”

  “I wouldn't count on it,” she replied. “Certainly not anytime soon, while they're still actively hunting for you.”

  “That's the problem I've got to address in the meantime.”

  “That's quite some little problem, being hunted by the entire space service,” she agreed.

  “I've got to find this General Roth and have him call off the hunt.”

  “What makes you think he will?”

  “I don't know,” he said wearily. “I'll just have to find some way to convince him that I'm not a threat to national security.”

  “They'll shoot you down before you get within half a mile of him,” she predicted.

  “Maybe not. They're looking for a fugitive who's hiding out in Washington, not a man who's stalking General Roth in New York. Hell, I'm not even supposed to know who Roth is, or that he's got anything to do with this. I'm supposed to turn myself in like a proper soldier and get killed right here and now.” He paused. “That's my advantage. I'm supposed to be hiding, not hunting.”

  “How are you going to get out of the city?”

  “That's the easy part,” he replied. “You've got your various printers here. You can make me a new driver's license and ID cards. I'll leave my uniform behind and go as a private citizen.” Suddenly he grinned. “I'll even let you treat me to a new car with some of your ill-gotten Swiss money. That way the registration papers will match my ID, just in case they start stopping cars on the way from here to New York.”

  “Yeah, it'll probably work,” she agreed after a moment's consideration. “But getting to New York is the easy part. Getting next to General Roth is the hard part.”

  “We'll convince him I'm still here,” said Becker. “You can use my ID and make a couple of clumsy efforts to access my computer files—clumsy enough to alert them to the fact that I'm in town, but without letting them pinpoint the location.”

  “Sounds good to me,” said Jaimie. “I'll take a couple of my machines along.”

  “Will they be able to tell that you're trying to access them from out of the area?”

  “They would if I did,” she replied. “But I'll leave a machine behind and program it to try accessing your files when it receives a signal from me.”

  “Okay,” said Becker. “Now, what can you tell me about General Roth?”

  “Let's go take a look,” she said, getting to her feet and leading him into the next room. Once it had been a dining room, complete with imitation chandelier and artificial wainscoting, but she had turned it into an office housing four computers of advanced capabilities.

  “Over here, Counselor,” she said, leading him to a computer that was in the farthest corner of the room. “By the way, before we start, maybe we'd better take care of the bill at your hotel so we don't alert the gunmen too soon.”

  “No,” said Becker.

  “No?”

  “They already know I'm in town, and that I'm not staying at my apartment. Why not make them waste some manpower hanging around the hotel waiting for me to show up?”

  “Good for you!” she said with a grin. “Every time I think you're hopeless, you come up with a suggestion like that.”

  “Thinking like a wanted criminal takes getting used to,” he replied.

  “Not at all, Counselor. You just start each day with the assumption that everyone in the world is out to get you, and you go from there.”

  “It's getting easier to assume that with every passing minute,” he said wryly.

  “By the way, are you getting hungry?” she asked. “It's nearly daybreak.”

  “Let's find out about Roth first.”

  “Whatever you say,” she replied with a shrug, activating the computer.

  A moment later the holographic screen displayed the grim visage of a middle-aged man with a shock of thick gray hair and a handlebar mustache.

  “That's him?” asked Becker.

  “That's him,” affirmed Jaimie. “Tough-looking grunt, isn't he?”

  “What information have you got on him?”

  She hit a few keys, and the image of General Roth was replaced by his military record. He had entered the army as a lieutenant twenty-three years ago, had seen action in Zambia, Pakistan, and Paraguay, had transferred to the space service six years ago, and had risen from the rank of lieutenant colonel to two-star general, though his record since then had been classified.

  “Where does he work out of?” asked Becker.

  Another command, another document.

  “Classi
fied?” said Becker, frowning. “How do his people get in touch with him?”

  “His people know where to find him.”

  “Can you break through the red tape?”

  “Given a couple of hours,” said Jaimie. “But I might not have to.”

  “Oh?”

  “Take a look at this.”

  She hit a final command on the keyboard, and the holograph of a steel-and-glass skyscraper appeared.

  “What's that?” said Becker. “It looks like the Diamond Tower.”

  “It is. He lives there.”

  “I thought apartments like that sold for four or five million dollars.”

  “He had a rich papa,” she replied with a smile.

  “How did you find out about this?” asked Becker.

  “Believe it or not, I checked the vidphone directory,” replied Jaimie. “His job may be classified, but evidently he has no objection to people knowing that he's a military bigwig with a lot of money. Besides,” she added, “the security in the Diamond Tower is probably every bit as good as the security at his office. He's gonna be a hard man to sneak up on.”

  “What floor is he on?” asked Becker, still staring intently at the building.

  “The hundred and fifteenth,” she said. “There are one hundred and forty, counting the restaurant on the roof.”

  “Got anything else on him?”

  “Not yet,” she replied, deactivating the computer. “But I will before we pay him a visit.” She paused. “How about some breakfast now?”

  He nodded. “Why not?”

  “I have to warn you, though—this kitchen isn't quite up to the quality of the one I left behind.”

  “How many futuristic devices does it take to scramble some eggs and make up a pot of coffee.”

  “Probably more than I have,” she said. “Cooking isn't one of my strong points.”

  “I was wondering if you had any weaknesses,” he said, following her into the kitchen.

  “Oh, I've got lots. I just hide them well.”

  “That you do. Somehow I feel safer taking on Covert Operations than having you as an enemy.”

  “That's only because nobody's taken a shot at you for a few hours. Don't forget that you've got the whole goddamned space service out there looking for you.”

  “You know,” he admitted, “I had forgotten it for a few minutes. Doping this out with you seems like an intellectual puzzle. It's still difficult to realize that my own people are really trying to kill me.”

  “Don't worry, Counselor,” she said, opening the refrigerator and removing a carton of eggs. “If you survive my cooking, you can survive anything.”

  “How comforting,” he replied dryly.

  “Anyway,” she said, “we'll eat breakfast, forge some false ID's, wait for the dealerships to open up, and buy a car.” She paused. “Something big and blue, I think.”

  “It's your money,” he said with a shrug.

  “Not yet, it isn't.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  She flashed him a grin. “Given all the trouble he's put us to, I think the very least General Roth can do is pay for our car.”

  14.

  Becker had never liked Manhattan. It was too big, too tall, too polluted, too crowded for him. He always felt claustrophobic walking the streets that seemed to exist only to separate the myriad of skyscrapers. Once upon a time the Empire State Building had been the tallest structure in the world; now Manhattan possessed more than 200 buildings that towered above it.

  Jaimie loved Manhattan for many of the same reasons that Becker felt uncomfortable there. A creature of the cities, she saw it as a Mecca of opportunity; its labyrinthian paths and multitude of hiding places made her feel secure rather than uneasy; and its populace appealed to her predatory instincts.

  The city was undergoing its annual face-lifting, the developers reclaiming three or four blocks on the west side while an equal area on the east side was allowed to fall into disrepair, and the poor, the hungry, the pimps and the prostitutes and the pushers, all began their annual migration toward that area which the city fathers felt they could ignore for another twelve months.

  They decided to stay at the relatively-new Regal Hotel on 58th Street, just a block away from such doyannes as the Plaza and the Park Lane. More to the point, it was only three blocks from the Diamond Tower on Fifth Avenue. It was large—157 stories, and close to 6,000 rooms—and characterless, but it always had some vacancies, and Jaimie had made reservations for connecting rooms before they had left Washington. The lower levels of the hotel housed a huge indoor garage, and they parked their new sedan there.

  They checked in separately—Jaimie had given Becker's home address as San Francisco and hers as Chicago—then looked about fruitlessly for a bellman who was willing to help unload the car. After waiting for almost twenty minutes, Becker finally found a cart, loaded their suitcases and the two computers Jaimie had brought along onto it, and found a freight elevator, which he took up to the 73rd floor. Once there, they quickly found their adjacent rooms, entered separately, and immediately ordered the connecting door to recede into the wall.

  “Well, we're here and nobody's shooting at us yet,” remarked Becker. “I suppose that's something.”

  “Nobody will bother us here,” she assured him. “I did a hell of a good job on our ID's. If anyone checks them out, the names and addresses actually exist, and the people are on vacation.”

  “How the hell did you find the name of some Chicagoan who was on vacation?”

  She grinned. “I invaded the database of one of the local kennels,” she replied. “I chose a woman who's visiting her mother in New York and isn't due back for a week. Did the same thing in San Francisco: you're a businessman who plans to spend fourteen to seventeen days traveling the East Coast.” She paused. “So if the military figures out that we're in Manhattan and starts running all the visitors’ names through a database, we're in the clear. My name won't be duplicated, because the woman is staying with her family, and your name won't show up in Manhattan for another week.”

  He stared at her. “You know, sometimes you scare the hell out of me,” he said at last.

  “Competent women do that to some men,” she replied with a smug smile.

  “I'm not only an officer in the military,” he continued, “but as a lawyer I'm also an officer of the court. I wonder just how many laws you've broken since we teamed up.”

  “Probably no more than you.”

  “Don't remind me.”

  “There's always an alternative,” she said.

  “Oh?”

  “Turn yourself in and give me the name of a good funeral home.”

  “Thanks,” he said wryly.

  “If you're through feeling sorry for yourself, how about helping me set up my computers?”

  “Why not?” he said with a shrug, walking over to the cart and unloading it. “By the way, are these things likely to get us into trouble with the hotel?”

  “Why should they? Lots of people take their computers with them, especially if they're on business trips.”

  “They don't take anything this complex,” he said, gesturing to the machine he had just placed on a table.

  “How many maids are gonna know the difference?” she shot back. “Trust me, Counselor.”

  He shrugged. “You're the computer expert.”

  “Hold that thought,” she said, making various connections at the back of the computer.

  It took them ten minutes to set both computers up and unpack their luggage. Then Becker took the cart down the hall and deposited it in the freight elevator and returned to his room.

  “Hey, Counselor,” said Jaimie from her own room.

  “Yeah?”

  “I'm hungry.”

  “Do you want to order from room service?” he suggested.

  “No. It costs too much.”

  “Don't tell me you're spending your own money.”

  “I'm not ... but I don't like being
ripped off anyway.”

  “All right,” he said. “Where do you want to go?”

  “There's a very nice little restaurant on 56th Street that I always hit when I'm in town. It's expensive, but at least you get your money's worth—and it's only a block from the Diamond Tower.”

  “I suppose I need to dress up for it.”

  “Well, not a tuxedo, but something a little better than you're wearing.”

  He sighed. “I'll be ready in five minutes.”

  “Make it ten,” she said, starting to close the door between their rooms. “You need a shave.”

  He took a quick shower, then shaved and donned a conservative gray business suit. This done, he walked to the door connecting their rooms and knocked on it.

  “Are you ready?” he called out.

  “Just a minute,” said Jaimie.

  A moment later the door opened and Jaimie entered his room, wearing an obviously expensive dress.

  “What are you staring at?” she demanded.

  “You look ... different.”

  “Is that good or bad?”

  “Good,” said Becker. “You look very elegant.”

  “I'll never get used to high heels,” she said disgustedly. “Stop staring. You're making me nervous.”

  “I'm so used to seeing you in blue jeans and sweatshirts, this is going to take a little getting used to.”

  “Get used to it in the elevator,” she said, opening his door and stepping out into the corridor. “I'm starving.”

  “Right,” he said, falling into step behind her.

  They walked to the elevator and spent a few moments waiting for it to arrive.

  “You know, you're a fine-looking woman when you make the effort,” he remarked.

  “I'm not gonna have to lock the door between us, am I?” she asked sharply.

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  “I was just saying that you look—”

  “I know what you were just saying,” she replied uneasily, “and I wish you'd stop.”

  It dawned on Becker that this was the very first time he'd ever seen her uncomfortable, regardless of the situation, and he didn't say another word until the elevator let them off at the upper lobby.

  “Looks like a convention,” he commented as they passed a number of people wearing plastic badges.