by Matt Forbeck
I didn't find the joke funny, but since I was in the building I went ahead with the backup anyhow. If I hadn't, I would have lost a full six months instead of three. Still, I put my head in my hands and growled at my own stupidity.
"Hey," said Querer. "It's only a quarter of a year. What's that to someone who's two hundred years old? An eighth of a percent of your life?"
"It's not the time lost," I said. "It's what I did with it, which I have no damned idea about. And since it all ended in a spectacular murder, it seems I might have been doing something important."
"Or annoying, at least. To the wrong people, that is."
For someone who'd just partnered up with a man at least six times her age, she showed no inkling of being intimidated. Despite my mood, I liked that.
"I'm not quite two hundred yet," I said.
"Not until November 2. Already planning the party?"
I shook my head. "When you reach that age, no one else is left to celebrate."
"You don't think much of the younger generations, do you?"
I laughed. "I'm the last of my generation, kid. I don't think much of anyone."
She arched an eyebrow at that.
"What was I working on before I was killed?"
"That's classified," she said. "Above my clearance."
But not mine. I called for my mission logs, but nothing came up on my pupil. "My log's blank," I said. "Aren't there any records?"
Querer fidgeted in her seat. "If there are, you didn't seem concerned about sharing them with anyone."
"What about my onboard records? On my last body?"
Querer looked a little drawn. She had words that she clearly didn't want to speak.
"You didn't recover the body?"
Her head gave a tight shake, barely more than a shudder. "No, we found the body and reclaimed it. What was left of it."
I felt a little sick myself then. That explained the blindfold in the thrideo.
"They took my eyes?" My voice came out softer than I'd intended.
Lots of murder victims lost their eyes, along with any other parts that could be stripped for someone else's use. Hair, bones, limbs, skin, kidneys, lungs, liver, stomach, arteries and veins, heart, even the face. Some bod-strip crews were so efficient they left nothing behind but the brain, which couldn't be implanted into someone else. The worst of those bastards even sold the gray matter as a depraved culinary delicacy.
But that had never happened to me before. I was a Secret Service agent, and I was amortal. If I died, someone was bound to notice, and few bod-strippers were willing to risk that kind of heat. There were too many easy victims roaming around the lower levels of American society to make dismembering such a high-profile target worthwhile.
Unless, of course, you were trying to make a point.
Querer swallowed, then answered. "They only got the eyes – and your tongue. The rest of your corpse was intact." She paused a beat. "Other than the damage the bullets did, of course."
A wave of relief washed over me. I realized I was sitting on the edge of my seat, and I leaned back into the chair.
"It happened before the recording," said Querer. "Your optic servers were fitted with last-gen encryption, of course, so the chances of someone being able to access the data in them is close to nil."
"But not actually nil." The sort of people who take the eyes of a Secret Service agent would know hackers who might have a shot at cracking their encryption, especially given enough time. "Did you wipe them by remote?"
Querer had that nauseous look on her face again. "We were unable to make contact with the lenses. They've either been forced offline or destroyed."
"Or cracked and re-encrypted."
She nodded. "There's always that chance. They're designed to wipe themselves if that happens."
I rolled my eyes. People forget that the Secret Service is charged with two missions. The first is to protect high-ranking American politicians and political candidates – from the President on down – as well as any foreign dignitaries on American soil. The other is to protect our currency.
Back when I was starting out with the Service, that meant stopping counterfeiters. This included everyone from kids scanning and printing out new twenties with their home computers, all the way up to hostile nations using top-of-the-line printing presses to deflate the value of the American dollar. As the world moved over to virtual currency, the Service moved with it. We went from raiding downtown print shops to tracking down malicious hackers around the world.
I'd gone back and forth between both sides of the Service. Every time I saved a President and came back, they rewarded me by transferring me back to currency control again. I hated it there. I preferred to protect people instead of numbers. Still, I always understood and went along with it.
The truth was my bosses didn't see the value of putting a high-profile agent in close proximity to a high-value protectee. Pinning a Medal of Honor on my chest made me a juicy media target, and no politician likes to be upstaged by someone who's supposed to be blending into the background. Not even the President. Maybe especially not.
Plus, it made me as much of a target as the people I was supposed to be protecting. There's something about being the world's oldest man that lures the loons off the lake. They start figuring that they can make a name for themselves by snuffing my trick candle, even if only for a day. I'd be perfectly happy to draw fire from my charges, but the thought that a bullet meant for me might find one of them drains all the utility from that.
After a decade or three went by, though, my fame always faded back into a multiply-cited footnote in history. Then my perpetual request for a transfer back into the personal protection side of the Service would finally go though.
This time, however, I'd been killed while working the currency side of the business. I wondered if this meant I'd be moved back to the President's detail soon. First, I had a murderer to find.
"What about the tongue?" I asked. "Why did they take that?"
Querer shrugged. "They command a nice price on the black market. Not as much as the eyes, sure, but enough to make it worthwhile."
I frowned. "But why not render down the rest of me? Why just the tongue?"
Querer took a shot in the dark. "They didn't want you to talk?"
I grunted. "More like they wanted something to prove they'd killed me. A trophy."
Querer screwed up her face, disgusted. "They could have done that with a hair sample or a few drops of blood."
"You don't understand trophy hunters, do you?"
"If you think someone would want to make a trophy out of you, you must think an awful lot of yourself."
I cracked a dry smile. "I have to. No one else does."
I'd seen many things more horrifying than a killer taking tongues. I decided to count myself lucky that it hadn't been worse for me.
Querer looked at me as if I were a purposefully dull child. "Your schedule for the evening contradicts you."
I squinted at her, confused. Then I called up my schedule and saw an event tagged to one of the urgent notices still flashing in my inbox. It read: "7pm: Rebirthday Party at the White House, at the President's Request. Attendance Mandatory."
I cursed. Querer, to her credit, did not blush.
"I don't have time for this," I said.
"We don't," Querer said, "but we will." She leaned forward in her seat, all business now. "I've set up contacts with the DC Chief of Police and the director of his forensics team. They would be happy to meet with us at our pleasure. I've also arranged for access to the crime scene."
She flicked her eyes to her upper right. "I estimate we have enough time to make one contact before your event tonight."
I stood up and headed for the door, not caring if she followed. "Fine," I said, "but I have to make one stop first."
CHAPTER THREE
The sun still rode high in the sky over Arlington National Cemetery as the sleek black Secret Service hovercar set down near the Eternal Flame. The expansive arr
ay of tiny white tombstones stretched out around us in all directions, each like immutable books that told an abbreviated story of the hero interred below. Low green robots that looked like small circular hovercraft mowed the grass between the markers, and a few other visitors roamed among the aisles formed by the white stones: tourists and mourners, some with flowers, others with prayers. One was taking gravestone rubbings of faded numbers and letters with a sheet of vellum and a charcoal stick that had turned her fingers the color of wet ash.
After the autopilot completed its parkdown, the hovercar's hatch released with a soft, pneumatic hiss, and I slipped out of the passenger compartment. I turned around and offered Querer a hand out. She stared at it for a moment before accepting it with a faint smile. We walked away from the car, and the hatch slid closed behind us.
I let my feet lead me down a familiar path that snaked through the markers, taking care not to tread upon the welltrimmed patches of green lawn above the dead. I kept my eyes on the ground as I went, trusting in over a century of habitual visits to steer me toward my goal.
Over all my years, I'd made and lost a lot of friends – and enemies, too, I supposed. Some of them I could barely picture, like candles guttering in the night wind, although I'd worked alongside them for years. Others burned like torches in my mind, illuminating signposts along the road of my life. Colleen Gallagher Dooley – my first and only wife – was the bonfire to which I always returned.
"You realize that this might make you late for your party with the President?" Querer said as she ambled after me.
I didn't even bother to shrug. "They can start without me. They have before. As long as I show up before they cut the cake."
"Ever missed that?"
I smiled to myself. "Just once. Never again."
"What happened?"
I glanced back at her, wondering if she really wanted to hear the story. She gave me a curious gesture that said, "Well?"
"Patrón made it clear that he could and would revoke the unique position of honor I hold in the Service should I ever again neglect to at least feign appreciation for it. I took him at his word."
"But how could you miss a party like that? All those powerful people gathered to honor you? That could turn a girl's head."
I bowed my head and considered my answer. "The President is just a person. A very powerful person who means a great deal to a large number of people, true. But the party is just another in a long string of photo-ops for her."
"And?"
"And I wanted to spend my first night back among the living with a very un-powerful person who meant very little to anyone else but everything to me."
"So," Querer said, "you always come here? A graveyard seems like a strange place to celebrate a long life."
I let out a whisper of a laugh. "It only seems that way to the young."
We walked the rest of the way in silence.
When I finally reached Colleen's grave, I raised my eyes and skidded to a halt on the dry green grass. A boy – a young man, really, but then everyone's younger than me – stood there on Colleen's grave, half-leaning and half-sitting on her tombstone.
I had my pistol out before I could think about it, leveled right at the kid's brain.
Querer followed my lead without hesitation. "Secret Service," she barked out. "Freeze!"
In all the times I'd come to visit my wife's grave over the past hundred years, no one had ever been there to meet me. At first, in the decade after Colleen had died, my son Cal had come with me, and for the first few times he'd brought his wife and kids too. When Cal got sick, though, his family rallied around him instead, choosing the living over the dead, for which I could hardly blame them. A couple of the grandkids had kept up the tradition after his cancer took him, but as they got older their visits became sparser and eventually stopped altogether.
Querer dropped her voice another octave and shouted at the boy again. "Get on your knees!"
Once, a woman I'd been dating had come here with me. She'd broken down crying later and soon after had told me she couldn't see me again. She told me she couldn't stand the thought of being just another road bump on the eternal highway of my life. I tried to explain to her that it wasn't anything like that, but she wouldn't listen. Maybe she couldn't.
I understood. It's hard watching the same powerful and popular people in the news looking the same every damn year – better and better, even – while you get older and weaker and fumble your way closer to death.
I always try to stay in the same skin for as long as I can, but some hollow-headed celebrities euthanize themselves every decade or so just to keep themselves looking young and fresh. Some of the most notorious hold suicide parties one day and rebirthday parties the next. Others just live recklessly enough to ensure that they wind up in a new body often enough to seem relevant to the next generation that comes along. When you have the wealth of several generations' worth of your own life behind you, it's not hard to figure out new and dangerous ways to spend it.
Only the rare friend had dared to come here with me since then. Patrón did once, the first time I was reborn after he became director. It made him so morose he swore he'd never repeat it again. But no one had ever been waiting here for me in over a hundred years.
The boy let his legs crumple beneath him. Then he fell forward onto his hands. Querer came around behind him, her gun in a two-handed grip aimed at the base of his skull.
The kid looked up at me, his wide gray eyes pleading for aid. He was tall and rangy with short blond hair, his skin sunscorched to a burnished pink. He had a twitchy way about him, as if his hide was a hair too tight for him and he needed to stretch it out. But maybe that was just panic from the two loaded pistols trained on him.
"Don't shoot!" he said. "Don't shoot!"
I tapped the law enforcement data layer and requested an ID. My lenses scanned his face, and the response flicked into my vision an instant later. The kid was seventeen years old. He lived with his parents in Alexandria, Virginia, just a few miles away. He was a good student with excellent grades and no history of run-ins with the law. According to his DMV records, he was six feet tall and a hundred and seventy pounds. He had no scars or tattoos, but a slight astigmatism in his right eye that had been genetically corrected at six years of age.
His name was Ronan Dooley VI.
I nearly dropped my gun. "Hold it!" I said, waving off Querer.
I flicked my eyes to toss the ID feed to her server. She gasped, then stared at me, her mouth gaping open.
"Grandpa?" the boy said.
I holstered my gun and helped the boy to his feet. He had grass stains on his knees but was otherwise unharmed. I aimed to see he stayed that way.
Querer lowered her sidearm but kept it in her hand. I shot her a nasty look, but she ignored it.
I put a hand on the boy's shoulder and stared at him. "What are you doing here?" It wasn't a great question, but at that moment it was all I had.
The boy shrugged. "I don't know. I just– I just wanted to meet you." He squinted up at me. "My whole life, I've never seen you once, not outside of a thrid. When I saw the news about you getting killed again, I figured this was my chance."
My first impulse was to gather the boy into my arms for a hug. I fought that. He might have been named after me, but he had sixty-three other ancestors with as much a claim to him as I did. Less than two percent of my blood ran through his veins.
Being suspicious is a Secret Service agent's occupational hazard. You never know what kind of threat you might have to face next, so you guard against everything – especially odd bits like distant direct relatives showing up unannounced.
"Would you like to introduce me?" Querer said.
I realized I'd been staring at the boy for a long while without either of us saying anything. I cleared my throat.
"I would," I said, "but I don't know him myself."
"I'm your grandson." Irritation and frustration welled up in the kid's voice.
"You
're my great-great-great-great-grandson," I said. "Six generations removed."
"You say that like it's not far enough," the kid said.
I took my hand from his shoulder and sighed. "It's not personal, kid. I never knew your father or grandfather either. I only met your great-grandfather a few times. We didn't get along."
"So you just cut us all out of your life?" Tears welled up in the kid's eyes, threatening to spill down cheeks flushed red under his sunburn.
I tried to think of something to say. I hadn't cut anyone out of my life, but then again I hadn't made much of an effort to reach out to my descendants either. "It's not like that."
"Then how is it?"