Been There, Done That

by Mackey Chandler

  Agent 71 got a much simpler message embedded in the French audio track of the same movie.

  Your assigned target will likely change his level or pattern of activity, if this becomes apparent to you from local observation advise us how and why. If it is within your ability to hide such an error on his part do so. No other changes.

  * * *

  The appetizers arrived not far behind the drinks. Pierre expected the drink to be a feminine frou-frou cocktail, cloyingly sweet and perhaps in a novelty container or with a cutesy prop such as a tiny umbrella. Instead it was tart and strong with only a sprig of mint as a decoration. The large tumbler in which it arrived was not cool to pick up. It was insulated to keep it a slush, so the last part was as enjoyable as the start. It was strong enough that he intended to nurse it along until he had some of the appetizers in him.

  “Are you comfortable with your new clothing?” April asked. “I found your previous business attire as exotic as you probably find your new outfit.”

  “Oddly, the shoes are the most difficult to stop thinking about. I have a pair of very old boat shoes that feel similar, but they are worn to the point of being unpresentable. It’s almost like being out and about town in your socks. We just aren’t accustomed to our feet feeling so unprotected in a public place.”

  The radishes were cut to look like rose buds and the thick cucumbers slices were seeded and then stuffed to look like sushi. The fried breaded balls with a toothpick through them turned out to hold a spicy meatball, and the deviled eggs all had a Greek olive or pearl onion pressed into the yolk. Everything was good.

  “You said you were going on to Central. Do you intend to speak to Heather when you visit there, or just scope out the lay of the land before going on to Marseille?” April wondered.

  “I hope to speak with the Sovereign and go to Marseille in time too. I’d hoped you would give a favorable report and encourage her to receive me, if she is not disposed to receive foreign dignitaries. I was told there is no ambassador from any Earth nation at Central,” Pierre said. “Is that coincidence or by design?”

  “From Heather’s end I know she has not excluded them. I can’t imagine she would, except perhaps China. They gifted her with a megaton love tap that left her one hell of a big, slightly radioactive, crater to backfill. Of course they paid for that with an entire fleet of spacecraft, so perhaps she’d call it even and see if they have learned any manners. I seriously doubt you need me to speak to Heather. She holds court once a week and anybody can walk in and plead their case or ask her to arbitrate conflicts. However I want to go to Central soon myself, so if you wish to ride along you are welcome to do so.

  “From the other end, I’m a very poor person to ask about Earth nation motivations. They are all a continuing mystery to me. I have my own history of not being able to come to an agreement with Earthies. Witness how I pleaded with North America to stop shooting at my partner Jeffrey most recently, and the military told the civilian traffic controller to stop accepting crank calls from any child with a pocket phone.

  “I doubt that particular jackass is still alive since I removed the base shooting at Jeff from existence. There’s a shallow valley there now from the overpressure. I was sorely tempted to expend another weapon and give California a nice new bay on the Pacific, but refrained.”

  “Yes, we were of course aware of that.” Pierre said. “North America of course claimed the video footage you released and the audio of the disrespectful fellow was faked, but I found it entirely believable. Our intelligence identified him from older public records too.”

  “Did they find any traffic from him after the bombardment?” April asked.

  “No,” Pierre admitted.

  “Good,” April said.

  The server returned to take their dinner order, saving him from an awkward silence, because what could you say to that? The new sheet was pale green and had one side fairly filled with print.

  “I’ll have the filet seared to a black crust on the outside and blood red in the center. The garlic butter over it, a double of new potatoes with sour cream, and whatever veggies you have today stir-fried with a little crunch left in them. You have a bottle of Champagne reserved for us,” April informed the server.

  “I can’t improve on that,” Pierre said with a theatrical flip of his hands.

  The server just nodded an acknowledgement and disappeared.

  Pierre was about to say something again when a gentleman approached closely and leaned in from the edge of the table to take April’s hand. He did a remarkably stiff little bow and lip brushed her knuckles.

  “We have not seen you for a couple weeks, Grandeza, and now here you are in the company of this scallywag. Everything is well I hope?” he asked with a grin and a sparkle to his eye.

  Pierre was taken aback. The fellow obviously knew him, but he could not place the fellow. He should know him but it was a blank. He knew that nose…

  “Ha! I’ve stumped you I see. Think of a long boring receiving line,” he invited, putting on a neutral mask and offering his hand mechanically.

  “My God, James, you’ve had the full program and look like a freshman college student!” Pierre said, staring in astonishment.

  “Perhaps a recent graduate,” he said modestly. “One feels better too. I very much recommend it, if that’s not already why you are here.”

  “I’m on a quiet diplomatic mission for Joel,” Pierre admitted. “If I did what you suggest I couldn’t return to Earth easily.”

  “Another good idea,” James agreed, with a huge smile. “Though one wishes it were possible to do vacations. I do miss skiing, and there’s nowhere here at all to keep a decent pony. But I have to return to my party. Now that I see you aren’t playing the secret agent with her.”

  “I don’t have it in me,” Pierre said in his defense. “I’m not devious enough.”

  “A terrible fault,” James agreed, and turned away with a wink at April. He went around the upper level back to a bigger table across the room.

  “And Elena!” Pierre exclaimed, when James rejoined his table.

  “Well of course, they adore each other,” April said.

  “I don’t understand,” Pierre said. “James has abdicated the throne. How could he confer a title on you?”

  “He didn’t. I told him I was a peer of Heather and a close personal friend. He said Grandeza is what would be the equivalent in Spain. Nobody else has ever used that form to address me. But I’d had a few other people pick titles with which they were more familiar to address me. It’s all silly. Anyone can respect you without a title and nobody in their right mind would think better of you for that alone. A bit and a title will get you a decent cup of coffee.”

  “I paid forty dollars Australian just the other day,” Pierre remembered.

  “That’s pretty pricey. It should have been special.”

  “I was a captive audience. It was on the shuttle from ISSII,” Pierre said.

  “Oh! Old Man Larson’s ship. It’s a wonder then it wasn’t sixty bucks.”

  “Who are the royals with?” Pierre asked. “The woman looks familiar.”

  “Ex-President Wiggen,” April supplied, “and her husband Ben. He’s a writer. They seem to be a set now.” At Pierre’s raised eyebrow she added, “Four square,” holding her hand up to him and slightly spreading the fingers and bringing them back together snuggly two times. “Not that anybody has said anything to me, it’s just a personal observation.”

  “Indeed, may James and Elena find joy in everything they find up here. They certainly got treated shabbily enough by their own in Spain.”

  “I may have to reappraise you as a reservoir of Earth Think,” April allowed.

  “We are not homogeneous in thought at all,” Pierre protested. “Not even within Europe if you get to know the variations within western civilization. I can easily find you Frenchmen who could not abide living in Sweden or Greece.”

  “I’ve dealt with North Americans more,” A
pril admitted, “and the Chinese might as well be space aliens for all I can figure them out.”

  Their server returned with a roll-along ice bucket and decanted the bottle. He made to present it to April but she motioned for him to let Pierre approve it.

  Pierre looked impressed, and told their server it was excellent. April was waiting for him to ask what it was, the towel obscured it, but after all her effort to make sure it was French, he never asked. Apparently he wasn’t a wine snob.

  Dinner arrived with a helper to their server and he waited until they indicated everything was satisfactory before leaving.

  “This is quite good, thank you,” Pierre said, and went back to it. He made some serious progress on it before he took a break and looked around.

  “There’s Sylvia, Heather’s mother that is,” he said surprised.

  “Yes, she just got back from New Las Vegas,” April said. “They came in and were seated about a thousand calories ago.”

  “I’d tried to tell her I was coming but couldn’t even leave a message.”

  “She’s an eccentric,” April admitted. “She’s told me she won’t be a slave to her com. She won’t forward them and just turns it off if she’s away so she doesn’t have to sort the messages later. Even during the war with North America she never made her politics clear to her daughter or us. I know she’s active, but it all happens behind the scenes at a personal level. How she can keep connected and go incommunicado periodically is a real mystery to me.”

  “You don’t like mysteries do you?” Pierre asked.

  “Touché.”

  “Who is she with over there?” Pierre wondered.

  “The other couple is my next door neighbor in Hawaii, Diana, and my body guard, who we call Gunny,” April said. “The fellow sitting closer to Sylvia is the local Registrar of Voters who conducts our Assemblies, Eduardo Muños.”

  “Ah, well there’s one of her political connections for you then,” Pierre said.

  “Maybe, but I think you’ll find other connections are present. I’m pretty sure they are just like the other foursome two booths over,” April said.

  “Oh… then I probably shouldn’t try her com again,” Pierre decided.

  “Not unless you want to commission a sculpture. Sorry,” April added.

  “Is this some trend on Home?” Pierre wondered.

  “I haven’t taken a poll,” April said. “I sort of assumed it happens everywhere, but in say, North America they would be actual criminals.” She was just happy he nodded and dropped it, and didn’t start asking about her relationships. That wasn’t going to happen, but it did make her start wondering about the dynamics of it. Jeff and Heather didn’t seem to find their partnership unbalanced.

  Their server poured the last of the Champagne. Filling April’s glass and draining the bottle gave Pierre a scant glass, and then he went away again since they were still eating. April expected Pierre to want details about Diana and Gunny, but he went right past that with no apparent interest.

  “When were you thinking of going to the Moon?” Pierre wondered.

  “Let me see what is available,” April said, and pulled a pad out. “Eddie, do you have a ship going to Central soon? If not do you have anything sitting idle? Do you have anybody to bring her back so I can stay? Fine that’ll work,” April said and terminated the call.

  “The day after tomorrow, we will take Eddie’s Folly to Central with a light load of carbon waste, UPS packages, and no passengers. He has a pilot to bring it back so I don’t have to worry about returning it.”

  “You mean you’re going to fly it?” Pierre asked.

  “Sure, why wouldn’t I? I need to keep my hours up to stay qualified.”

  “How qualified are you?” Pierre asked.

  “Dual certificates, orbit to orbit and powered landing,” April said. “I have qualifications I can’t even tell you,” she said, remembering her jump experience.

  “I’ve never had the luxury of a private space craft,” Pierre said.

  That sounded better. April was starting to think he didn’t trust her.

  “May I offer you dessert?” their server asked.

  “Not me,” Pierre declined.

  “I’d like the double chocolate brownie with pecan butter ice cream, and a pot of coffee. You’ll have coffee too won’t you?” she asked Pierre.

  He looked absolutely stunned, but managed a “Yes.”

  “It’s the gene mods,” April explained. “I burn it up.”

  * * *

  Agent 103 wasn’t picked for political reliability and following orders. He had a type 3 intelligence in the 160/180 range of the revised Rothman Intelligence Scale. He had a doctorate in mathematics, had done original work in Game Theory, and held minor degrees in Systems Engineering and Economics. He was capable of innovation while operating independently. He even sang well. That sort of person often found a way around orders they didn’t like. They not only thought they were smarter than their boss, they were usually right. Nobody could stand him to work with him, so an isolated posting was good for everybody. When he was role playing, pretending to be a normal person instead of himself for a mission, he was much more tolerable. Asking him to put that false façade on between missions would be awkward.

  Agent 71 was the safety brake on 103’s actions his handlers felt necessary to have in place for their own safety. Otherwise people on that end of the Rothman scale tended to overthrow governments, including their own, and create megaweapons if left unsupervised. It took a certain level of bravery to use someone smarter than yourself who was out of your direct physical control and observation. 71 was much more the loyal drone and would remove 103 without compunction if ordered to do so.

  103 knew 71 had to exist, but made no effort to discover him. The very act of discovery might be seen as disloyalty by his handlers. Intelligence agents were paranoid by definition. Worse they might go to the trouble to set another safety in place without removing 71. Discovering 71 was simply one of those contingency plans in his mind he never expected to use. If he needed to do so it would be a great deal of trouble but he had confidence he could do so. That would involve removing all the access to the local administrative data net he had been given, and activating the unauthorized one of his own making he had in place ready to go. The other agent, he assumed was in place to watch him, probably shared at least elements of that back door, so cutting him off from being able to follow 103 that way would start the clock running to find and eliminate him or die trying.

  The problem he was handed was entirely sufficient for the moment. The data given him indicated there was a secret. Also since it involved transport it had to involve location. Now, the next question of analysis was did it involve multiple locations or one? The simplest solution would of course be one, and the easiest to solve, so he decided to get that out of the way first before getting into the more complex problem.

  In theory, the trip of every rover, not only in exploration, but even repetitious supply runs to established outposts and instrument sites, was logged on MarsNet from day one on the Martian surface. 103 didn’t believe that for a minute, but it was a starting point. He was looking for any trip which went to a distant location and was never officially repeated, or hidden as a waypoint to other sites. These routes followed certain patterns as they matured.

  Once a route was mapped as safe the same trip could be repeated much faster. Even if there were sections that needed special caution they could be noted in the log and alerts attached to the map. If they were bad enough alternate sections could be explored rather than a whole new route.

  He’d also create an overview map to look for any point that didn’t have a normal density of similar trips surrounding it or extended beyond it. And given how people think, he’d see if there were any areas that had a pattern of trips, there or nearby, canceled. People thought that a trip canceled wasn’t significant, but simply planning such a trip was just as significant as if it had actually been carried out, perhaps
more so.

  All the historic data was useful, but he also needed a current feed that would document every rover departure and return to check against what was logged. He hated to do that. He’d only deployed recording devices once before, and hadn’t been at all comfortable with the risk. In this case the fact they still had one central repair facility and car park for the rovers, made it easier. When the outposts got big enough to have independent rover garages it would be nearly impossible.

  The camera he selected could be adjusted for sensitivity so it would note any rover leaving the gate but ignore pedestrian traffic. It would take a couple frames for each event and time stamp them. Once positioned 103 could interrogate and reset the camera wirelessly just walking by or sitting in the same room. The map of the base showed six ports from which the rover yard could be observed. One was his own office which he rejected. He decided to use two with public access that observed it from quite different angles, as that might yield additional data. By using two he could look out the port from anyplace in the room or corridor having that view, and the chances he’d miss a movement due to a random walk through obscuring the view would be negligible with two in operation.

  * * *

  April ate every last bite of the large dessert. She was still a fairly slight young woman by Earth standards. Pierre had no idea how she could contain it. The coffee was better than the cafeteria, but so different than Mr. Larkin’s vending coffee, a direct comparison was pointless. In particular he had a little pitcher of what he mistakenly thought was heavy cream with this serving. Pierre would have loved to know the price point for the club coffee compared to Larkin’s, but it would be gauche to inquire while he was the owner’s guest.

  Since he’d unwittingly triggered an unpleasant memory while talking about jewelry with April, Pierre had thought it best to put off presenting his gift until they were journeying to the Moon or later. However, April was so visibly content and relaxed again, that he reconsidered.