by Matt Forbeck
Querer smiled at me. "How many times have you saved someone's life?"
I shrugged. "I don't keep track of things like that."
"Give it a guess."
I shook my head. "It's hard to define anyhow. Sure, there are the clear-cut occasions when I stepped in front of a bullet, but that's hardly everything. Did I save a President's life by the decisions I made on an advance trip scouting out a dangerous location? Once I found a dirty bomb in Union Station and disarmed it. How many lives did I save there?"
"Why do you keep doing it? Saving people, I mean."
I stared at her as if a second head had popped out of the bandage on her shoulder. "Because it needs doing."
"Sure, but there are others who can handle these things too. Are you saying you're the only member of the Secret Service who can properly take a bullet?"
"Of course not."
"Then why not retire? You've certainly earned it. I bet if you turned in your accumulated vacation and sick days you could probably pocket a few years' salary too. Plus, what sort of pension do you qualify for with a hundred and seventy-five years of service under your belt?"
"They cap it at fifty years."
"That hardly seems fair, does it?"
"You're using 'fair' to describe our federal bureaucracy?"
She flung her eyes wide at that. "Are you saying something less than positive about your country, Dooley? Not to mention your employer?"
"Let's just say it's not always the easiest job and leave it at that."
"So," she pressed, "why not retire?"
"It's not that simple. I retire now, I still have a good fifty or more years ahead of me in this body, assuming no one comes after me to kill me once I'm out from under the protective umbrella of the Secret Service. What am I supposed to do with all that time?"
"Oh, I don't know. Enjoy it?" Sarcasm dripped from her tone. "Take a vacation? Wander the world? Find yourself a young lady and settle down? Live the life of the idle rich?"
"Does that strike you as something I would like to do?"
"I don't know, Dooley. I think you could learn to enjoy it. Maybe you could reacquaint yourself with your family."
My face fell at her words. My single attempt at doing that in this century hadn't gone well at all.
"I'm sorry," she said, her voice swollen with sympathy. "It's just that I see you out there, working to save the world, and you're all alone. You don't even have anyone to come home to at the end of the day."
I marveled at her. "They must have you hopped up on some wonderful painkillers to get you talking to me like that."
"Am I not right?"
I took a moment to digest that, hoping she'd say something to fill the void. She didn't, so I finally did.
"I used to have a life. Then I got killed. Now all I have is a job. It's a good job, an important job, and I'm good at it."
I realized I was slouching in my chair, and I sat up straight and looked the wounded woman in the eye. "I protect people. That's what I do."
Then I remembered who I was talking to and what had happened to her the night before. "Or at least I go down trying."
She gave me a forgiving smile for that. "I've been checking up on you," she said. "Before they took you off protective detail, you had been getting yourself killed more and more often."
"I didn't pull any of those triggers."
"You might as well have, the way you threw yourself at assassins. You ever think about doing that?"
"What?" I felt myself start to squirm in my chair and had to concentrate to stop it. "Kill myself? I have a good life. Nothing to complain about."
"You're just in denial. Everybody has something they can bitch about. Just answer the question."
I pursed my lips for a full minute. Then I let it out. "Sure," I said. "I've thought about it. It's a long, lonely life, even when you're not amortal. Everybody thinks about it at one point or another."
I let that lie there between us. When Querer spoke, I had to strain to hear her voice. "Ever act on that?"
I shook my head. "Not that I know of."
"Do you think you might have but now can't remember it?"
"Every time I died, it was in the line of duty. It's all a matter of public record. You can look it up."
"I did." She leaned forward in her bed, despite the obvious pain it caused her. "Are you sure you–" She stopped herself. "Do you remember a woman named Arwen Glover?"
The name brought me up short. It sounded familiar, but I couldn't remember why. I looked her up in my contacts file, and her image slid into the edge of my vision. She was beautiful – stunning, really – with shoulder-length blonde hair and bright blue eyes. The image was from the last time I'd seen her, thirty years ago, but I thought I should have remembered a woman like that for a much longer time.
"She worked with me at the Secret Service," I said. I recalled running into her a few times at headquarters, but that was it. "That was a long time ago though. I haven't seen her since."
I refocused my eyes on Querer, suddenly suspicious about her change in subject. No matter how grateful I might have been for it, she wasn't the sort of person to just jump around in a conversation. Maybe the painkillers had made her fuzzy, but I had to wonder where she was going with this.
"Why?" I asked.
Querer grimaced and wouldn't meet my eyes.
"Why?" I leaned forward in my chair. I wasn't going to let this pass.
Querer rolled her eyes in resignation. "Because she's here."
I stared at her. "What?"
At that moment, a woman burst in through the door. She looked very much like the lady I'd resurrected from my nanoserver's memory, but thirty years older. I stood up to greet her, but she rushed right past me, favoring her right leg just a bit.
As she did, a flood of memories about her shocked me to silence. I hadn't seen her in thirty years, but she looked much the same. She wore her hair the exact same way, although she had let it go from blonde to white. She bore many lines on her face, and while they showed her worries about Querer at the moment, I could see that the deepest ones had come from smiling. She carried herself with the same grace as before, although she moved a hair slower and seemed an inch shorter.
"Amanda!" she said as she reached out to put her arms around Querer. "I saw the report this morning when I got up, and I was so worried about you I ran right over."
Querer held up her arms to keep Arwen from hugging her hard enough to pop her stitches, and the effort made her wince in pain. "It's OK, Mom," she said. "I'm all right."
"All right? You were shot!"
Querer made an either-or gesture with her hands. "I'll be fine. It's not that big a deal."
"'Mom'?" I said.
Arwen snapped around to look at me, unaware that she had stormed right past me. Querer groaned, but this time not from any physical pain.
Arwen gaped at me, displaying her perfect white teeth and her wide blue eyes, which were as bright as ever. "Ronan Dooley?" Her voice was soft but warm.
I put out my hand, and she took it, more out of reflex than will. "It's been a long time, Arwen."
"Yes," she said, staring at me and then down at our hands. "Yes, it has."
I let go of her hand, and it fell to her side. She gazed at me, still astonished, until Querer cleared her throat. Then Arwen hopped around and glared at the bed-ridden woman.
"Why didn't you tell me you were working with Ronan?" Arwen said. "You mentioned a new partner, but you think you might have bothered to tell me who it was."
Looking now, I could see a strong resemblance between the two women. Querer had dark curly hair with deep brown eyes, while Arwen's hair was graying and straight, and her eyes were blue. Their height, their build, the structure of their faces, though, were almost identical.
Querer threw up her hands. "I didn't think it was that important, Mom. The Secret Service is a large organization. I didn't know if you'd ever worked together."
Arwen gave me a sidelong gl
ance as she continued to scold Querer. "Well, I don't know if Ronan would remember me, but I certainly remember him. He's the most decorated agent in the history of the Service, after all."
"Of course, I remember you, Arwen," I said. "I think I had a little crush on you back in those days."
She had the decency to blush at that. "Oh, but I was a married woman climbing the ladder at the Secret Service."
"Which is why I never brought it up back then," I said. "It's too bad we never had the chance to work together."
"Oh, but we did," she said with delight. Then, concerned, she cocked her head to the side. "Don't you remember?"
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I frowned. "I'll be two hundred years old next month," I said, "but I think I would remember something like that."
"Unless you somehow forgot to back yourself up again," Querer said in a dry tone.
Arwen gazed at me expectantly. I found I could not look away. I hadn't been lying when I said I had a crush on her back in the day, although it hadn't been nearly so little as I'd made it out to be. She'd wormed her way into my thoughts for weeks.
But then I had forgotten about her almost entirely. What, I wondered, would make me do something like that?
I thought back to thirty years ago. That would have been 2138. I turned 170 that year. I died that year too.
I'd been working the cybercrimes division again in those days. I'd foiled an attack against Senator Lee during the 2136 Presidential campaign, and Patrón had decided to take me off protection until the public – or at least the crazies who were likely to focus on me as a target again – had forgotten about me. I'd seen the wisdom in that, although I hadn't been happy about it.
"I remember meeting you in late 2137," I said to Arwen. "But I don't recall us being assigned to anything together. Your office was on the floor below mine in those days."
Arwen frowned. "But nothing else?" I could see the effort she made to keep her voice steady.
I shook my head. "Now that I think back on it, Querer – Amanda – is right. I lost about six months of my memories back in 2138. After that, Patrón had Mangold – remember him? – bring me in for my backups every week, whether I wanted to or not. That went on until Mangold retired fifteen years later, and Patrón never bothered to give anyone else the assignment."
"Well," Arwen said in a hoarse voice, tears welling in her eyes, "I suppose that explains a lot."
"What is it?" I said. I wanted to help her, but I had no idea what she was so distressed about.
She collected herself, then faced me head on. "I used to wonder why I never heard from you after all that happened. You went off to go save the world, and the next thing I knew you were dead and being brought back to life at the Amortals Project."
"What happened to you?" I asked. "Why didn't I ever see you again after that?"
Arwen reached down and rubbed her right thigh. "I took a bullet in this leg, and Patrón insisted I retire. He made sure I received full disability payments, so I didn't have to work again."
"So you just quit?" said Querer.
Arwen looked over at her daughter. "I was pregnant with you when that all happened. I nearly lost you when I was shot. That scared me enough to keep me home for a long time. Raising you alone took a lot of work."
"What happened to your husband?" I asked. I didn't recall ever meeting him, but I noticed that Arwen wore no wedding ring on her hand now.
Arwen gave a helpless frown. "We married young, and it didn't go well. After I got out of the hospital and came home, he realized that he'd been scared for me but not at all for himself. He didn't love me anymore, he confessed, and he left. He didn't know I was pregnant at the time. Hell, I barely knew myself."
I checked Querer's reaction. She was busy ignoring her mother and staring out the wallscreen instead. She'd clearly heard this tale before.
"Anyhow," she said, sweeping away the wistfulness in her face with a forced smile, "that's all ancient history now."
"To you," I said. "To me it's all new. Like watching reruns of a thrid you missed when it came out."
Arwen smiled at that, and this time it wasn't forced.
"So what did we work on together?" I asked. I didn't want the conversation to end quite yet.
"I don't know all the details about it," Arwen said. "Some of it was above my clearance. I just went where I was needed and did what I was ordered."
"That's the best kind of agent. We could use more of those in the Service."
"I read about it," said Querer. Arwen and I both turned to look at her in surprise.
"I didn't think you'd have clearance to read that report," I said. "I barely do, and I was in the thick of it."
Querer smirked at me. "I didn't break any laws. I'm a good little agent too. I read the parts that weren't auto-redacted for my level. Even that much makes for an amazing story."
"It's just the job," I said. "We work with some pretty amazing people. 'Standing next to history,' I've heard it said."
"Yeah," Querer said, "but a plot involving the Pro-Deathers, the President, and the Pope? That doesn't come along but once in a lifetime – even for you."
I put a modest smile on my face and kept my mouth zipped.
"What?" Arwen said. "Oh, Ronan, what happened? Can you tell me about it?"
I hemmed and hawed about it. "Technically, no. It's all classified at the topmost level. Actually, it's above my level, and I shouldn't even know about it. In fact, I barely do."
"That's what you get for not backing up," Querer said. "You would think you'd have learned that lesson."
"Old dogs and new tricks," Arwen said. "He didn't grow up with amortals running around like you did, honey. He didn't have a role model to follow."
"Fortunately, most of them don't follow his example, or we'd have huge gaps in our national history."
I put up a hand to silence the comments. "I did my job, and I saved a lot of lives. That counts more than any memories of it."
"Or so you were told," said Querer.
"You remember Father G?" I said.
"The man leading the protesters outside the White House? Sure."
"I met first met him during that incident. He was our informant."
Querer goggled at that. "That Pro-Deather? But why? He hates amortals, doesn't he?"
I shook my head. "He's a good man, just a little misguided. When he found himself getting wrapped up with the One Resurrectionists behind the assassination plot, he knew he had to do something to stop them. He came to me and told me everything."
Arwen nodded. "If only he hadn't been too late."
"What do you mean, 'too late'?" Querer asked, a hint of indignity in her voice. "Dooley saved both the President and the Pope. Doesn't that count for something?"
Arwen reached up and touched my cheek with more tenderness than I thought I deserved. "Yes," she said, gazing into my eyes, "but not in time for Ronan to save himself."
I tried to smile at that but found I couldn't manage it. "I got better," I said.
Remembering herself, Arwen retrieved her hand and looked away.
"Do you think maybe they have something to do with it this time around?" said Querer.
"Who?"
"The One Resurrectionists. They certainly have a history with you. Maybe you were investigating another plot of theirs and got too close."
I rubbed my forehead as I mulled that over. I'd had a long night, and I was still in the blood-spattered clothes I'd been wearing when the Kalis hauled me into the Tidal Pool.
My first thought was that Querer was overreaching. I'd seen nothing since my revivification to indicate that Father G or the One Resurrectionists or any other religious movement had been behind my murder. I couldn't just go around accusing every old enemy of killing me, working them over until one of them cracked.
On the other hand, I didn't have much else in the way of a plan.
"What do you think?" I said to Arwen.
She blushed. "Oh, don't ask me," she said. "I'
ve been out of the game far too long. You can't possibly care what an old lady like me might think."
"Can the false modesty, Arwen," I said. "I don't remember enough of you, but I know you're one of the sharpest agents the Service ever had. And I may only look like I'm thirty, but I haven't really been that old since your great-great-grandmother was in diapers."
She covered her mouth to stifle a laugh at that. "All right then," she said, becoming serious. "I think it's a definite possibility. How many other leads do you have?"