by John Vassar
The pen was now displaying a steady green glow.
Harry Doyle picked up his glass. ‘Okay, we’re good. It was one of ours. Told them I was off duty and to get out of my face. And, by the way, I’m fifty-seven and I get laid when I damn well want to.’
‘My mistake,’ said Mitchell, with as much insincerity as possible.
‘But listen,’ said Doyle, jabbing at the pen. ‘If this thing can pick up bugs then it can be detected when it’s scanning. Jesus, Lee, even I know that much. Ops wanted to know how I knew the MD was there at all. How come it didn’t pick up your gizmo?’
‘Because it didn’t detect it. The tec in here is sub-ether.’
Doyle sat back. ‘So that’s what you’ve been up to for the last four years. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. You’ve turned into a geek.’
‘A what?’
‘Someone who knows how to use a pen.’
Mitchell made a mental note to check on that. He placed the offending article in the centre of the table. ‘So, now we can talk.’
Silence again. Mitchell wondered why the hell he was bothering. He should be back at his airscreen working on that overdue MedMart project instead of having his intelligence insulted by his supposed best friend. A full minute later, Harry Doyle lowered his shields. His voice was subdued, but it didn’t take long to work out why.
‘Okay, I’ll level with you. We may have a wolf in the fold.’
‘What?’
‘I know it sounds crazy. We haven’t had a breach of internal security at DS in over fifty years. Tell the truth, I’m not convinced we have one now.’ Doyle raised his eyes. ‘And that’s why I need you - because I’m not sure.’
‘You don’t know how close I came to walking out of here.’
‘Yes I do,’ said Doyle. ‘And I also knew you wouldn’t.’
‘You’re serious? A security breach at Delere Secos?’
‘Yep. Serious enough to need another slug.’ Doyle signalled to the bar. The change in his body language transmitted itself to the fat man, who this time managed to pour their drinks without sounding like a set of antique door chimes. Mitchell got a look at his wrist at last – his IDN was glowing amber. Just as he’d thought. A sceler on borrowed time. As the con waddled back outside the sound-cocoon’s influence, the DS Chief muttered, ‘That’s Greaseball. I used his intel to arrest three lunar workers on contraband and fraud last year. Real name, Julius Moreno. Second generation, second-rate mining technician.’ Doyle stared at the sweat-stained back of his informant. ‘Born ExTerra with the IQ of a chimp...’
‘Got the looks to match,’ said Mitchell.
Doyle laughed for the first time. ‘Probably interbreeding going back generations. Whatever. Point is, he was up to his fat ass smuggling automs lunar-side. I convinced him it was a smart idea to rat on his buddies once I’d wrapped up the evidence on him, which wasn’t difficult. I cut him a deal, fixed him up with a new IDN and got him some work back here for his troubles. May have overestimated his ability to walk and talk at the same time, though. The guy’s a freakin’ loser any way up.’
Mitchell was having trouble keeping a straight face. ‘Harry, has anyone ever told you that you sound like an old movie?’
‘Plenty. But I don’t give a shit. You can learn a lot from those old vids. People relied on their own smarts in those days, not gimmicky bits of tec like this…’ Doyle flicked a disdainful finger at the pen.
‘I give up,’ said Mitchell. ‘Tell me about this scam – who the hell smuggles automs anyway?’
‘That’s what I thought. The whole operation was run by a bent insurance company called Nukasaan Associates. Commercial robotics specialists. ExTerra ops are pricey to cover, so all they had to do was undercut a little. They worked on getting business lunar-side, and with Minetec in particular.’
‘Minetec… precious metals? Plants on Mars ExTerra too…’
‘Right. Titanium mostly. But the crux is they’re the biggest single user of labour automs, period.’
Mitchell remembered some media headlines. ‘They had a few problems a while back. A couple of big accidents lunar-side.’
‘Greaseball and his friends were right in the middle of all that,’ said Doyle. ‘They sanctioned the reports on the written-off automs, and not just from the incidents that hit the media. Maybe two or three units a week were busted up just from general operations. Every one faked, and faked well enough to fool the loss adjusters. Nukasaan were a silent partner in a recyc company that had the contract to dispose of the damaged goods. So, once the underwriters paid up, a simple job to divert the shipments, patch up the clunkers, then re-sell them on the open market.’
‘With their own distributor to filter them back into the system?’
‘Exactly. We nailed the entire set-up from Nukasaan down, but we never did find the head of the snake. Assuming this thing stopped at the head...’
‘You don’t sound convinced,’ said Mitchell.
‘I’m not. What I’ve just told you is the condensed version of the official case report.’
‘So, what haven’t you told me?’
Doyle took a gulp of whisky, then looked away. ‘We couldn’t trace the rebuilt automs. Greaseball told us there were hundreds, but we only traced one, the original clunker that tipped us off in the first place. Even that was down to a fluke accident in a loading bay. Either the ringers were so good that they’re undetectable or the bulk of them ended up somewhere else.’
‘Did you get a name for the reseller?’
Doyle nodded. ‘Guy called Dr Eduard Reber, Head of R & D at a subsidiary of Autogen called Cytec. Our fat friend over there gave us the intel.’
‘Autogen? Why the hell would he take risks working for Autogen? They’re good payers. I mean really good.’ Mitchell gave a half-smile. ‘And I know Cytec. Tendered for a sec upgrade contract with them a while back. Spent weeks putting that damn proposal together. I guess I was never in with a chance but the bottom line made it worth a shot.’
‘You’re right, it doesn’t make sense. Reber, I mean, not you. I could have told you Autogen wouldn’t take on a one-man outfit, no matter how much intellectual bullshit you fed them.’
‘Thanks, Harry.’
‘You’re welcome. Anyhow, I bluffed their Board that I wanted to eliminate him from FedStat’s enquiries and they agreed to a meeting. Except I never got my cosy chat with Dr Eduard Reber. He vanished a couple of hours before our meet.’
‘Nobody vanishes,’ said Mitchell. ‘You taught me that…’
‘Into thin air, Lee, I’m not kidding. His ID Node is still transmitting life signs to this day, but no location data. Which, as we both know, is impossible. Even then, Autogen refused to believe Reber was involved. Once I found out how much he was making, I saw their point.’
Mitchell sipped at his drink, the whisky doing its best to burn the buds off his tongue. ‘I don’t get it. This whole autom thing sounds like a cheap scam.’
‘It was. Any punk sceler with half a brain could make as much selling sniffer mix. When you factor in transportation costs, overheads and payoffs, there was less than two per cent left. The operation looked like it had been set up years ago, but it made no goddam sense - unless the motive never was profit...’
‘What else could it have been?’
‘Beats me. But this is bigger than it looks. Much bigger.’
Mitchell saw a look in Harry Doyle’s eyes that made the hairs raise on the back of his neck. Doyle leaned forward and said, ‘We dug around at Autogen as much as the law would allow. Nothing solid came up, but there was an incident later that month that convinced me there was more to this than Autogen were admitting. At first, it didn’t look connected to the Reber case. Some clerk at Populus Control with emotional problems decided to blow his own brains out with a vintage shotgun. Did it in a Transit car of all places, you should have seen the mess. Glad we don’t use lead any more...’
‘Suicides are on the up,’ said Mitchell. ‘Haven�
��t you heard? The world thinks it’s going crazy with all this talk of latent abilities. I should know…’
‘Will you let me finish? As a Populus Control employee, we gave what was left of him the standard FedStat autopsy, included a screen for hallucinogens. What we found was a minute trace of a drug with similar properties to Verum-12.’
Mitchell frowned. ‘Verum? How did he get his hands on that?’
‘He didn’t. How could he, for Christ’s sake?’
‘Right… so he was given the stuff without knowing it.’
Doyle gave a nod. ‘I checked the clerk’s work record. No prior mental problems, impeccable attendance, you know the type. But here’s the clincher – for two days before his death, he’d been auditing Autogen’s personnel files. I took the drug we found to one of our retired lab guys. Turns out in the early days of FedStat, something similar was used along with auto-suggestion techniques to pre-program staffers. They called it Performance Enhancement. Truth is, the poor bastards would have a specific mission task embedded in their minds along with - and get this, Lee, it makes me sick to my stomach - an unwavering desire to carry that task out.’
Mitchell frowned. ‘How much desire? Enough to override their survival instincts?’
‘Yep. That’s why the programme was stopped. That’s what I think happened to our friend, the clerk. Autogen programmed his suicide.’
‘To stop him uncovering Reber’s activities? Why go to all that effort? If Reber was involved in the scam, they’d have the resources to deal with it well out of the Populus eye.’
‘That’s my point.’ Doyle’s knuckles showed white on the whisky glass. ‘I want to know what Reber was working on that was so important they had to kill two people once his profile with FedStat had been raised.’
‘So you think Reber’s dead too, rather than just ‘vanished’?’
‘Sure of it.’
‘And Autogen are covering up a hidden conspiracy? Getting a Populus Control clerk to whitewash Reber’s record and then killing them both?’ Mitchell put down his glass and stared at Doyle. ‘Do you know how difficult it is to alter a Populus record?’
‘Sure I do, I’m not a fucking idiot. Listen to me, Lee, I know I’m on to something and this is why. My theory’s been ignored and the case has been closed. DS Director’s orders, sanctioned by the High Council. I’ve been warned off by my own people. People right at the top.’
‘I’m not surprised.’
Doyle didn’t hear the remark. ‘Don’t you see? If Autogen have influence at command level in FedStat, we’ve been breached. Big time.’
‘So you want me there for what... a second opinion?’
‘I want you to take over where I left off. As a non-com desk jockey, you can access information with your technical know-how that would take me months to get at. And if my hunch is right, the trail from Autogen could lead right back to the High Council itself. Lee, you’ve got to help me – my gut tells me I’m right. Do we have a deal?’
Mitchell lowered his voice, despite the sound-cocoon. ‘No, we don’t have a damn deal. What if I get caught digging around in level 10 records without authorisation? It’s treason, Harry.’
‘I need someone I can trust. And it’s worth the risk.’
‘Maybe from where you’re sitting. But I stand to lose the lot, with a good chance of a penal sentence or worse.’
Doyle slumped back in the fake wooden chair. ‘Jeez, I’m sorry. I forgot your pension.’
‘I don’t mean FedStat’s keep-your-mouth-shut payoff. I mean you. Listen to yourself. This is nothing but half-assed, paranoid speculation.’
‘Then prove me wrong.’ Doyle’s eyes were ablaze now. ‘Honestly, Lee, I want you to prove me wrong. Because if I’m not, we’ll need rock-solid evidence to take to the High Council and that’s not going be easy.’
Mitchell glared back. ‘It’s not going to happen, Harry. You haven’t thought this through. And you’re forgetting the most important thing. After what they did to me, why should I even care?’
Doyle slid from his chair to within six inches of Mitchell’s face.
‘Fuck you, then.’
Mitchell watched him barge through the standing customers and out onto the walkway. From the bar, Julius Moreno watched him too, then realised Doyle had left without leaving him a tip. He turned back with an ingratiating leer.
The sound-cocoon was still active. ‘You’re a worthless little runt,’ said Mitchell, smiling and raising his glass towards the bar.
Above the noise, Moreno couldn’t quite hear what Doyle’s friend had said, but smiled back anyway. It was a very special occasion when someone was polite to him.
Mitchell stood outside Mulligan’s and let the drizzle cool his face. Either he or Doyle would call the other tomorrow and there would be some mumbling between them that would pass for a mutual male apology. They had disagreed before and would do so again, although Mitchell had never seen him this emotional. The idea that Delere Secos had been compromised was ludicrous. Crazier still, Harry sounded like he believed it. And if he was that worried, why the hell didn’t he just ask the SenANNs? As Ops Chief of Delere Secos, he had SenANN interface privileges, not that you’d know it. Access to the most advanced machine minds ever built and he had used the interface just three times that Mitchell knew of while he’d been active at DS.
A niggling pain had set in between his eyes. Doyle had forgotten to leave him the alcohol antidote before his meltdown. Mitchell pulled up his collar and began the fifteen-minute walk to Yorktown terminus. He could have taken another a-Cab, but he was hoping that what passed for fresh air would clear his head. That turned out to be optimistic. He’d shown no interest in the view on the incoming journey and now he understood why. This part of Yorktown, by any stretch of the imagination, was a dump. Its proximity to the Great Lakes Populus Transit node meant the neighbourhood was filled with cheap hotels, souvenir outlets, the worst synth food available and a never-ending array of seedy bars, of which Mulligan’s was the seediest. Mitchell’s pace quickened as the drizzle got heavier. The sanitised air and autom stewards of an orbtown shuttle flight lay ahead, but it was better than this. Ten rain-sodden minutes later he was in the departure lobby, his head throbbing. The volume level of the annunciator didn’t help, except to inform him that the next orbital shuttle was his. Twenty minutes to kill. He took the travelator to the Vista Room, begrudging the time he was wasting and had already wasted. It could have been worse - three hours worse if his timing had been off. Every orbtown took just under three hours to complete an orbit of Earth, with the shuttles from each spaceport across the globe scheduled to dock at their nearest approach. Chasing them around the globe was not a financially viable option. Everyone who used the shuttles regularly had dispensed with a comlink alarm, having developed in internal time-clock for when their own was due. Mitchell stared out into the night. By now, Harry would be way beyond the trajectory of any orbtown on his way to Sat-1.
Non-com desk jockey… what the hell was Harry thinking?
The vista panel looked out over Lake Ontario, the portals below spitting out their bright travellers over the water. He caught sight of a FedStat patrol skimmer a few kilometres away, its searchlight creating a bright cone in the rain. Both he and his headache hoped that Harry’s fat friend Greaseball was the target, but an arrest for being congenitally ugly was improbable. His spirits lifted as he remembered his parting shot at Mulligan’s. Maybe he could market his Pen as a leisure item... He’d have to think of a better brand name than ‘sound-cocoon’ though, which sounded like a giant pair of ear-muffs. Then he’d have to cut in the nanotech engineer who had done most of the development work. That was a deal-breaker, so it was back to the airscreen for him tomorrow. His flight was called and he trudged to the embarkation gate.
His aisle seat was next to two giggling girls wearing too much makeup and very little else. Whatever they had been drinking or sniffing was sending them into fits of laughter at nothing. The view was bette
r than a rainy night in Yorktown, but this was not going to be a quiet flight. Mitchell reclined and closed his eyes. His thoughts wandered back to his FedStat Academy days and his aikido teacher, Sensei Noguchi. With the patience of a saint, Noguchi had done his best to instil mental discipline into his cadets, insisting that their mental state was at least as important as the physical. His efforts were in vain – all any agent wanted to do at that age was learn how best to beat up the opposition. Mitchell had dismissed the spiritual side of his Aikido class as a minor irrelevance, but now he was desperate enough to reconsider. Noguchi had insisted it was possible to consciously influence the body’s pain responses... He aimed for the area behind his forehead where the whisky molecules had attacked without mercy. Five minutes of intense frowning later, he gave up. Noguchi had been right in one respect; ‘…Cadet Mitchell has very little faith in the mind-body-spirit philosophy’. It was unfortunate that the Sensei’s opinion had counted for nothing at his final DS appraisal.
He opened his eyes and straightened the seat. The headache was still there, but the shrieking had stopped - one of the girls had keeled over and was slumped against the viewport. Her blonde-and-emerald companion was still very much awake. She crossed her legs and allowed her foot to brush Mitchell’s calf.
‘I’m Talia,’ she said, wriggling gently to make the point. ‘Suki’s fallen asleep. Now I’ve got no-one to talk to...’
Maybe this would take his mind off the headache… ‘Lee Mitchell.’
‘Hello, Lee Mitchell…’
She looked half his age, seventeen at the most, but that impression had been constructed with great care. Underneath the layers of makeup was a pretty face with wide, hazel eyes that smouldered through the dim cabin lights. Those eyes were the giveaway, adding enough years to alleviate any guilt on his part. They belonged to someone with an understanding of life. And they were very, very beautiful.