by Jim Rudnick
He looked away for a moment, then shrugged, and looked back at her.
“Not easy, but yes—sort of. I can’t hack in like I used to—what I can access is all small stuff, personnel, suppliers, that kind of thing. What I need is, of course, access to the opening event routines—something that so far is still in their inner queue—programmers only and I’m no longer an academy programmer. But once all things gel, that should be opened up to the normal access for all admins and the like—and I still have a set of those IDs to try. So yes, I’m getting there but not yet,” he said.
She just looked at him. “I am counting on you, David. Your Aunt Mariam is counting on you, David, and hundreds of twins yet un-conceived are counting on you too,” she said quietly.
He looked away again, and they traveled the rest of the way to Eons in silence.
#####
In Admiral Higgins’ inner office, Tanner, the admiral, and his aide, Lieutenant CoSharan, stood looking at the folding tabletop that had been carried in, placed against a wall, and set up with the academy opening event stage layouts.
What someone had done was to copy the seating arrangements according to the latest list of attending heads of state and then put that name on the back of a little block of wood indicating a chair. Then the chairs had been arranged into rows, and the dais with the microphone was positioned up at the front, looking out at the audience that would be seated out on the tower landing tarmac.
Admiral Higgins looked at it and said, “Well, what are the complaints so far?” in a gruff voice.
His lieutenant said, “Sir, yes, Sir, they’re up now.” He pushed a button on his tablet, and above the table on the wall, a screen now held bullet points listing issues.
“Sir,” the lieutenant read, “the first one is that the Takan and Conclusion heads have bitched about being put in row number two and behind the Eran head of state. At twelve feet tall and in the front row—as was requested by him by the way—he’ll block out half the row behind him. Rest of that row probably hasn’t even looked at the seating, so they’re unaware but will squawk big time once they get here.”
Tanner looked back at the layouts, and what the lieutenant said was probably true. Takan and Conclusion were right behind the Eran head of state, so they’d not be seen at all, and as neither was on the list to speak, the audience would never know they were even there.
The admiral looked at him and said, “So …”
Tanner shook his head, as he really had no answer.
The fact that Eran was populated with an alien race that at full adult height stretched up for a dozen feet made holding any kind of event that they would attend a nightmare for event planners…
“Sir, I note that whomever did the chairs for this display neglected to make the Eran chair three times as wide as any other, and that might have had something to do with this. Is there anyway, Lieutenant, for us to shift the Eran head over to the end of that front row? Still in the front row, but then we can shorten the second row behind him so that all can be seen? Would that work?” he asked.
“Gonna have to—next,” the admiral said, and his aide clicked a button, and the next item came up on the screen.
“The Tillion head of state has requested that his row—note the use of the personal pronoun—that his row has no women in it whatsoever. No surprise there, so we can do this now, right?” the lieutenant said. He moved to the table, and placing the Eran head of state at the far right side of the front row, he picked up two chairs from behind it. He moved one to the third row and the other to the third row on the left side. Then he switched the chairs for Tillion from the front row left-hand side to the second shorter row on the right-hand side.
Tanner could see that the remaining seats in that short second row were now held by Novertag, Duos, and Tillion. Not a woman there, so that would work, and the admiral grunted, “Next!”
The list was still long, and it took almost a full hour to get through to the last item.
The admiral’s aide read exactly the final listing with what Tanner could tell had no inflections or values added by him.
“The Leudi head of state has requested that he not only not be seated close to the Faraway head of state—but that he be on the whole other side of the stage from him. The Faraway head of state has made the same exact request, too …”
As a Faraway citizen, with that tail that told all, it was easy to see as it was raised up and pointed at the ceiling that the lieutenant would have loved to have said more—but he didn’t.
Good man—rather, good alien, Tanner corrected himself and said, “Simple.”
He reached over to the stage layout, picked up the Leudi chair, and dropped it directly onto the second row behind the huge Eran head of state.
“Problem solved, yes?” he inquired, and both he and the lieutenant looked at the admiral.
It was no surprise that the Leudies were not in the good graces of most of the RIM Confederacy realms. It had recently come to pass that their huge margins on an antidote for a recent outbreak of a serious influenza had been leaked—as had the fact that buying the antidote made one addicted to same, which raised their revenues considerably.
The admiral smiled. “Good. Then I take it we’re done?” he asked, which got smiles all around, and they moved on to the speakers.
That list was much shorter and had been already vetted by both the Master Adept and Admiral Childs.
“Childs will be the MC but also deliver a keynote address right up front,” the lieutenant read off his tablet.
“Followed by the Master Adept, then the Baroness or the Lady St. August—we’ve not heard back as yet. Of course, rumors are that the Baroness was out on their annexed new planet, Ghayth—more than seventy lights ahead, so I’ve notified the lady that she may be speaking for the Barony. For a reason that escapes me,” he said, and he held up his hands to show that he didn’t want to know, “we have a short piece by the local professor’s union president—one Prof Nigel Watkins. What he might have to say, I’ve no idea, but he’ll be followed by the head of the construction firm, Superintendent Bill Chapman, who will say nice things too—least he’s been instructed to do same. Then Admiral Higgins has a short piece to let them know how they can contact us should they find a shortfall in their rooms or the like, and we finish with Admiral McQueen to welcome the cadets and the grand cutting of the big wide ribbon—scissors for every head of state—and the vids will capture it all.
“Oh, tours of all the tours have been already filmed and will appear on the many vid screens including the huge one behind the stage too so that one and all can get a sense of the size of the project and how well we’ve all done. Expect that few will say so—but I do think we did,” the lieutenant finished up.
All there were quiet. Seemed like a full couple of hours, Tanner thought, but then that’s what these things were like.
The last time he was a part of an event like this was on Halberd. As that thought crossed his mind, he flashed back to his time on Halberd at the prison and their 100th Anniversary of no escapes event. That had been ambushed by the prison convicts who had been able to turn off the force field protecting the stage that was even more crammed with heads of state. He’d had to draw his Colt and kill the revolt leader and then the convict’s sister who had been aiming at the Caliph to kill him. He’d had to kill both of them that day, and the resulting effects on him—
“Captain,” the admiral said, shaking Tanner’s arm, “Captain—are you okay?”
Tanner shook it off. The PTSD came so seldom that he was unaware his left hand was beating the one, two two ... one, two two anti-PTSD rhythm on the table. He shook his head once more, jammed his left hand into his pants pocket, and smiled at the admiral.
“Sorry, Sir, lost in thought,” he said and backed up and away from the table.
The admiral looked at him out of the side of his eye and then nodded.
“Okay, Lieutenant” he said, moving on, “next … catering, seating, shuttle
s from the other towers …”
#####
It had taken most of last week, but with a plan on the go, the actual doing was a lot more stressful, David knew.
He walked to the corner and breathed deeply, hyperventilating his lungs until he sounded like he was almost out of breath. Turning, he trotted down the block behind him about halfway and went in the outer doors of the cleaners and right up to the counter.
A woman stood in front of him, and yet he went right up to the counter and snapped his fingers in the clerk’s face.
“Hello … hello?” he said and snapped them again.
The woman who had been in the process of complaining about some kind of poor cleaning job, done on the sweater on the counter, just stared at him open-mouthed.
The clerk held out a hand to stop him from going on, but he had no time for that.
“Ma’am, my boss is outside in the car—and his Eons Power uniforms are late. Late once again. Dunno if they’re on that rack or wherever they are, but we have a big—bloody big—account with you. If you can’t give me his uniforms, he’s going to come in here and tear a strip off the owner—Herbert, right? And I’d say he’d cancel our annual contract with you. Is that important enough to allow me to butt in on the lineup here?” he said, as he looked at the clerk and then the woman who shrugged.
He dug in his pocket, came up with a twenty-credit bill, and placed it on top of the woman’s sweater.
“Ma’am, I’d love to pay to get this re-cleaned—re-cleaned properly, mind you,” he said, as he stared at the clerk.
The clerk shrugged and said, “Ticket?”
He looked at her. “Ma’am, I have no ticket, but we never get tickets. Your drivers pick up the dirty uniforms and deliver them. Except that my boss—Foreman Rance Peters—did not get his. That means that they’re here, somewhere … go find them!” he pushed, and the clerk, sensing that this was more important than she’d first thought, nodded and disappeared.
David made small talk with the middle-aged woman and agreed wholeheartedly that the worlds had gone to hell in a hand basket—one just could not get good reliable service on almost any type of job.
Three minutes later, the clerk reappeared with four uniforms all hung and clad in transparent plastic wrap.
“Found ‘em—seems the wearer got some kind of almost impossible to remove stains down the side of one of the jumpsuits, so we held all three ‘til it was ready too … sorry about that. But they are all clean and nicely pressed.” The clerk stated the obvious.
David nodded and grabbed them down off the hanger stand.
“Fine, but don’t ever do that again,” he added as he spun on a heel and went back out the door to the left. At the first corner, he found the robo-cab button kiosk and called for one. Dessau was far ahead of Aporia and the simple ability to call a cab using a button was a great example of same.
Twenty minutes later, he was in the Wool Hostel, hustling up the stairs to his room on floor three.
It took him almost another hour to find out more about the Eons Power grid at the new academy and tower Number Four, new lines and all. As he did so, he tried on a jumpsuit and found that as he’d surmised from Peter’s own page on the Eons Power site, they shared similar sized frames and waist and chest sizes. Foreman. Now he was going to be a foreman …
It fit. It was about one inch too small in the inseam, but that was all he noticed. He smiled when he saw the name badge proclaimed the word foreman. The white jumpsuit would now be filled with a techie—a hacker—instead of a power expert.
On top of that, he put on a hoodie and a pair of loose jeans to hide the uniform. He looked again in the mirror and thought plain-looking young man—nothing to worry about.
He smiled one more time as he checked his time on his new PDA and noted it was just before lunch.
He wanted to be there near the end of lunch, so he gathered up his other props, placed them in a white shoulder bag, and took the stairs back down. He also made sure to pack carefully the special battery he’d only gotten this morning before the uniform gathering.
At the curb, he grabbed the robo-cab that was idling, and he inquired if it was equipped to take him out to the new academy towers. The robo-cab’s AI replied, “Sorry, we can’t get there,” but he was also told that the cab could take him to the Dessau landing port, where a shuttle flyer could handle the last part of the trip, and he nodded.
A half hour later, he was in the shuttle flyer almost alone as there was only one other couple on board, and they emptied out of the shuttle as soon as it landed.
David stood and quickly dropped off the hoodie and jeans too, and he now looked like an Eons Power guy. He tucked his clothes into the space below the seat in front of him, and then hoisting the heavy bag over his shoulder, he began to walk toward the stage. He had thirty minutes to get back on board.
A Provost guard, gnawing on what looked like a Skoggian plum, nodded to him, pointed, and said, “Your boys are over there … uh … Foreman,” and then went back to the plum.
The area he had pointed to was a tented enclosure that luckily was sealed off on this side, and as he left the guard, he commented that he’d see them later as he was here to check their work. From inside came the sounds of some kind of music he’d never heard before, and he was glad to leave that behind too as he strode away.
He went down the far right side of the huge swath of seats, all the way to the front, and then around the huge stage, and then to the back. Working at an audio-visual sound station, a couple of sound techs nodded to him but didn’t stop. He went by them to the actual back of the large frame that would hoist up the full vid screen for one and all to see the tour videos. “And more,” he said to himself.
He looked down at the cables, and three separate power cables came from somewhere and connected to the screen assembly. The three of them climbed up about ten feet to a big power distribution nexus. From that large distribution node, they then went to three specific spots.
One was very easy to identify as it was plugged into a socket that was labeled Power to Frame-IN.
One more was also easy, as it was plugged into what looked like a splitter box, which sent the streaming video to all the various displays all over the grounds. He lost count at thirty-eight, but that didn’t matter. This box was positioned on the rear of the big vid screen about halfway up.
The final power cord went to the router that routed various streams to various displays. Why they’d have that, he had no idea, but all three of the power cables were right in front of him. And he could do nothing with them at all.
When his aunt’s vid began to play, someone would think of the big red switch and just turn off all video feeds.
Those switches would be somewhere at master power control and another here at Tower Number Four somewhere, and one could just as easily grab these cables and yank them out. He had thought of that, and the videos would all have a crawl at the bottom of the screen letting services know that all power cables were live—to grab one would cause a massive electrical shock—perhaps even a lethal shock.
The switches before the cables had been the issue he’d fought with all along, and he had an answer.
He went back to the group of sound techies and spoke to one he thought looked more in charge.
“Excuse me? I’m a dumb ass foreman sent to check on the team we have here doing the power install. Might I borrow that ladder there,” he said as he pointed at a yellow wooden one leaning up close to the screen frame.
The sound tech never even looked and just waved and nodded.
David went and got the ladder. He moved it over so he could have access to the power distribution node and scrambled up it easily. Once there, he took a look, and yes, there was a big red switch built into the node, and that made him smile.
Pulling out the Ni-Cad battery, he turned it on first and placed it exactly where it would work, on the outgoing side of the node, and then he stopped.
Kill power. Plug the th
ree cables into the battery. Plug the battery into all three ports in the distribution node. Then turn back on power.
It had seemed easy as he’d studied and memorized the plan over the past month.
Here goes nothing. He toggled the big red switch, and around him, some things went off—lights and a hum died too. He yanked out the three cables from the distribution node and plugged them into the battery. He plugged the battery into the three outgoing ports on the distribution node and then hit the big red RESTART switch, and in less than a second, all was well.
Power is back on, and we own the last spot that one could perhaps kill the power to for the opening event videos.
Nodding to the sound techie, he said, “Waste of time, these guys are good,” as he replaced the ladder and moved off once again to round the stage, go past the lineup of seats, and then return to the landing field to the shuttle flyer.
As he got just about off the field, someone behind him yelled something. He couldn’t understand what the man had said, but he too was dressed in a white Eons Power jumpsuit.
Not good—especially if this guy actually knew Foreman Peters.
As he reached the Provost guard, the man held out a hand and waved behind him.
He interrupted the guard right away. “Yup, I know—he’s one of the slackers whose work I just checked. Gotta turn in my report, so if you could just slow him down so that I can make the shuttle,” David said as the props of same had just started up.
With a nod and a wink, the guard said, ”You’ve got it, Sir—hustle now!” as he moved up toward the man who had taken to trotting to try to catch David.
Sliding in the open door of the shuttle, he was pleased to once again note that there were only a couple of other passengers, and he took the same seat. With his foot, he dragged out the hoodie and put it on.
So … he thought, so far, so good …