by Tom Clancy
To Jay, such a debate was a yawner, about as exciting as eating a bowl of cold oatmeal while watching paint dry, but the buzz in the room was certainly enthusiastic.
The reason Jay was here was because the DEA agent Brett Lee and the NSA agent Zachary George had both attended this conference as teenagers. It could have been a coincidence — there were hundreds of students here, one team from the small states, and multiple teams from the bigger ones — but maybe this was where the two had run afoul of each other originally.
That would make sense, Jay reasoned. Being on opposite sides of a debate would mean that one would lose and the other would win, and maybe arguments had gotten heated to the point of personal anger.
However, a check of the records once he got to looking revealed that Lee and George had not been on teams that debated each other. In fact, neither of their teams made it to the finals. Georgia got blown out in the first round. Vermont did get to the quarter-finals, and had argued the affirmative position against a team from Nebraska, the result of which was that they had also been eliminated. Georgia and Vermont had not even been staying on the same floor of the hotel.
Jay’s scenario was based on old news footage, hotel records, and camcorder tapes and photographs taken by students and teachers, as well as the official society recordings that had been compiled and sold commercially. The net was still in its infancy in the early nineties, but there were some old debate web pages in WWW archives, and some BBSs. Jay had set his searchbots and blenders and strained it all, feeding it into a simple WYSIWYG view program. Added a few bells and whistles, of course.
So there he sat, with the Nebraskans and the Vermontians — the Vermontinese? the Vermin? — about ready to go at it.
Zachary George was the leader of his duo, and he was the opening speaker for the round.
He got up, defined terms, and began his introduction to his reasoning.
George said, “In times of war or national disasters, the country as a whole must come before individuals. While we are a nation based on liberty for all, destruction of the national structure could easily result in liberty for none.
“If a man has a cancerous finger, is it not wiser to cut off the finger than allow it to spread and destroy him? Is a single finger worth the whole man? No, of course not. Likewise, if the life of the nation is threatened, a single or a few individuals cannot be allowed to cause such destruction. As the great Roman general Iphicrates said two thousand years ago, ‘The needs of the many must outweigh the needs of the few.’ ”
Huh. Jay thought that quote came from the Vulcan Star Trek character Spock, in one of the old movies from the eighties or nineties.
George continued in this vein, but Jay was busy looking around, trying to spot Lee. It didn’t take long. The young Brett Lee, looking much as he had in Jay’s earlier scenario at Stonewall Jackson High, watched George from a third-row seat, leaning forward eagerly, hanging on every word.
Jay got up and moved to get a better look at Lee.
George droned on: “… and did not Plato say, ‘No human thing is of serious importance’? How then can the temporary suspension of liberty by a man or even a small group of men compare to the liberty of millions?”
Jay walked to a point where he could see Lee’s face.
Hmm. Lee’s expression certainly did not seem like that of a young man who scorned what he was hearing. It was more like a believer hearing a sermon by his favorite preacher. Or a young man listening to the words of his beloved. Could these two have been friends who later had a falling out?
This definitely needed more exploration, Jay decided.
But scenario could only do so much. As the speech continued, Jay’s attempt to learn more was frustrated by the facts — or lack thereof. Whether in scenario or RW, if it wasn’t there, any speculation about an event was just that, speculation. The program would let Jay make anything he wanted to happen in VR happen, but it would not necessarily be what actually happened.
Despite Jay’s best efforts, he could not put the two boys together at the debate conference outside the presentation done at the quarter-final competition. Sure, it was likely both Lee and George had been at the semifinals and the final team debate. Both the Vermont and Georgia teams had stayed until the conference was over; the records reflected that. They almost certainly would have been in the audience watching, and it was not inconceivable that they had somehow met before or after that.
There were a few records after the quarter-finals on both boys, but nothing that put the two of them in any closer proximity than they were in Jay’s scenario.
Maybe wasn’t the same as for sure.
Even so, Jay felt as if there was something buried here, something he needed to uncover.
The problem was, how?
20
Washington, D.C.
When Toni walked into the kitchen, she saw the microscope. It sat on the table, a red bow stuck to it.
She was stunned. A total surprise.
“Alex! Where are you?”
After a moment, he came into the kitchen, grinning.
“You shouldn’t have done this.” She waved at the scope.
“Yeah, I should have. I’ve been slack in my husbandly duties lately.”
“I hadn’t noticed that.”
“Not those duties. The, uh, expectant father ones.”
“It’s a beautiful piece of equipment,” she said, touching the scope mount with one hand. “But we can’t afford it.”
“We can. I had enough left in the car account to get it. You deserve it.”
“It was a want, not a need,” she said.
“Nah, you needed it. I could tell.”
She smiled, and realized she hadn’t been doing enough of that lately. “Thank you, darling.”
“What, you aren’t going to make me take it back?”
She laughed, and she knew he’d said it to make her laugh.
“I got two lenses to do whatever it is it is supposed to do so you can work under it,” he said. “Supposedly you’ll have a foot between the lens and the work object. I hope that’s enough.”
“It is. My pin vises are only about seven inches long or so.”
“Yeah, mine, too,” he said, waggling his eyebrows.
Again, she laughed.
“I should buy you one of these every day. Well, go set it up and see how it works.”
“Later,” she said. “I have something else in mind first.”
“What else could be more important?” Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.
“Come along, and I’ll show you.”
Now it was his turn to laugh. And even if she was pregnant, they were still newlyweds, right?
Toni headed for the bedroom, and Alex was right behind her. No farther than seven inches, the way she figured it.
* * *
Jay was deep in cyberspace, working a scenario that involved hunting something big and mean with a pack of dogs, when a disembodied voice said, “Honey, I’m home!”
He dropped out of VR, blinked, and beheld Saji.
Saji, stark naked.
“Whoa!” he said.
“Sure, now you notice me. I’ve been here for half an hour. If I were a thief, I could have walked off with everything in the place, including you, and you’d have been oblivious.”
“Uh…”
“What’s the matter, goat-boy? Cat got your tongue?”
“I hope,” he said, grinning.
* * *
John Howard and his wife Nadine were about to take a shower together, something they hadn’t been able to do much in the last ten or twelve years with their son running around the house. But now that he was in Canada, well, it was time to make hay while the sun shone.
“I’m fat and ugly,” Nadine said. “I don’t know why you want me around.”
“Well, you’re a pretty good cook,” he allowed.
She threw her shoe at him, but he was expecting it, so he managed to dodge it.
“Of course, you also have lousy aim.”
She reached for her other shoe.
The phone rang.
“Let the robot answer it,” he said.
“This from the master of duty? It could be Tyrone.”
Nadine picked up the phone. The extension in the bathroom was a faux antique dial phone that didn’t have a caller ID screen. “Hello? Oh, hey, baby!”
Yep. Tyrone.
Howard had mixed feelings about the call. Of course he was happy to hear from his son. He’d have been a little happier if the boy’s sense of timing wasn’t so lousy. Half an hour earlier or an hour later, those would have been better. People who didn’t have children didn’t know what happened to their sex lives after the little ones got big enough to pad down the hall and shove the bedroom door open, looking for Mama and Daddy.
“Yeah, sweetie, he’s right here. I’ll put him on.”
Howard took the phone. Unfortunately, he stopped paying attention to Nadine as soon as Tyrone said hello. A mistake.
The second shoe hit him on the butt.
“Hey, ow!”
“Dad?”
“Nothing, son. Your mom is just being cute.”
Santa Monica, California
The Hammer was coming on by the time Tad left the movie theater. Like he thought, there hadn’t been any surveillance cams set up in the theater proper. There was one installed in the redi-teller in the lobby, but neither he nor Bobby had used the money machine when the Zee-ster had done his private showing. There wasn’t any need; everything had been on the tab Zeigler ran.
By the time he got to the gym, the chem was working pretty good in Tad. It had come on faster than usual. Maybe it was because he had tripped such a short time ago and was still wrung out, or maybe it had to do with the other dope he’d been taking to stay ambulatory. Whatever. Thor was on a roll, urging Tad to join him in a night of ass-kicking and taking names, and it was all Tad could do to maintain control.
Steve’s Gym was an upscale place just off the PCH that catered to serious jocks. Tad pushed open the door, got a blast of frigid AC in the face, and almost had an orgasm from the cold rush.
Lifting weights had never been Tad’s thing. As a kid, his lungs had been too bad to let him do squat physically. Between the bronchitis and asthma that later opened him up for tuberculosis, and his naturally skinny frame, he was never gonna be able to bulk up, so he hadn’t ever tried.
With the Hammer working, he could probably go over and grab one of those big barbells and twirl it like a drum majorette’s baton if he wanted to, but why bother? Nobody here he wanted to impress.
“Can I help you?” came a deep voice from off to Tad’s right.
He looked. There was a woman there who looked like the Incredible Hulk’s sister: She was big, heavy, ugly, and looked as if she needed a shave. But she had tits — fake ones — and the red leotard she wore showed an absence of male equipment down south. A definite woman, sort of.
Tad smiled, enjoying a particularly nice rush of something in the chem cocktail. “Steve around?”
According to Bobby, Steve was the owner of the gym. He was a former Mr. America, Mr. Universe, and Mr. Whatever Came After That, past his prime but still as big as a rhino and plated with slabs of steroid-cured muscle. Maybe six two, two sixty, down twenty or thirty pounds from his competition days, Steve was still as wide as a door with arms as big around as most guys’ legs. Bobby wasn’t in the same class as most of the bodybuilders who came in to move mountains of iron plates, but he was buffed enough so nobody laughed when he took off his shirt, and in better shape than most of the celebrity jocks who made it a point to be seen here. Guys like the Zee-ster, who had personal trainers the way most people had toothbrushes, would stop by, do a few sets, work up a sweat, and have their pictures taken by their publicity guys as they left, all pumped up and manly.
Anyway, Bobby had told him to talk to Steve, who’d be happy to help out any friend of Bobby’s. Bobby dropped a lot of money in this place, doing private sessions, buying T-shirts and vitamins and shit.
The Amazon said, “He’s with a client right now. Maybe I can help you?” Her expression at seeing his pipe-stem frame in his black clothes said she didn’t really think she could help him, that God Himself would have trouble helping such a pencil-necked geek.
Tad smiled, his mind zipping along quickly, making connections and drawing conclusions that were usually beyond him. The Hammer made you strong as Superman, but it also gave you Lex Luthor’s brainpower. That wasn’t just subjective on his part, either, he had done some things that convinced him the increase in processing power was real.
He said, “Nah, it’s personal biz.”
“He’s gonna be about an hour,” the woman said. “You can wait if you want.”
Normally, Tad might have gone for that. An hour was nothing when he was straight — well, more or less straight. But when the Hammer was pounding in your brain, doing nothing for an hour when you were in the gotta-move stage was pretty much impossible.
Another body rush swept over Tad, and as it did, he got an erection, a woody that came up all of a sudden, like a switchblade opening, boing!
He looked at the woman bodybuilder. She probably outweighed him by thirty or forty pounds, and no way, no how was she his type, but she was female and she was right here. He said, “You want to screw? I bet I can wear you out in an hour.”
The woman laughed, a deep, resonant rumble way down in her belly. “Oh, wow, that’s really funny. You and me? Ha!”
Tad smiled pleasantly.
“Even if I was into men, which I’m not, you’d be the last guy I’d choose, fuzz-brain. I’d want somebody who could pick me up and put me down easy, and you don’t look like you could pick up an empty beer bottle without help.”
Tad continued to smile. Quickly, he stepped up to her, scooped her up, and held the startled bodybuilder cradled in his arms like a baby. “You mean like this? So, I passed the test, right?”
With that, he used his left arm to support her weight, reached over with his right hand, caught the leotard between her breasts and ripped it down the front, all the way to the crotch. The cloth fell away like tissue, showing the muscular nudity underneath.
The woman was still behind the curve, so startled by what he had done and probably that he had been able to do it, her mouth just gaped.
“Nice hooters,” Tad said. “You get a good deal on ’em?”
He stuck his hand between her legs, and whatever surprise she felt faded enough for her to scream and punch him at the same time.
Tad ignored the loose fist she threw as it bounced off his cheekbone, and sought to explore the area his hand had found. She started kicking and screaming, and even with the Hammer, he was having trouble keeping her still.
The cavalry arrived then, three guys who together probably weighed as much as a small car.
“Hey! What the fuck are you doing?!” one of them said. “Put Belinda down, asshole!”
“You got a security cam setup in here?” Tad asked.
“You’re damned straight we do, you fucking psycho!”
“Where is it?”
“Charlie, call the cops. And call an ambulance for this moron,” the guy said.
“You must be Steve, right?”
“That’s right, dickweed, and you’re dead. Put her down!”
Tad grinned. As it sometimes did when he got excited, the drugs in the Hammer came up full blast, roaring in like a tornado.
“Here,” he said. He threw Belinda at the three. Charlie had stepped away, heading for a phone, but Belinda hit Steve and his Neanderthal buddy hard enough to knock them over. All three of them tumbled to the floor, hard.
Tad leaped at Charlie, grabbed him under the armpits, and lifted him into the air until his feet cleared the floor. Charlie had to go about two fifty, maybe two sixty, a nice hefty lad. “Which way is the security cam control room?”
Charlie, who hung there like a kid’s doll, stamme
red, “Th-th-there!”
He pointed.
Since Steve was almost back on his feet, Tad turned and threw Charlie at him. The collision of beef was pretty hard.
Tad ran for the unmarked door, didn’t bother to use the knob, and knocked it open. There was a video monitor and a computer set up, a big hard drive working.
Tad glanced around. No diskettes stacked up anywhere, no removable drives on the shelves. He moved closer and divined that the security device was no more than it appeared to be: a short-time recorder that ran a cycle, recording over and over, using the same storage device.
He grabbed the thing, smashed it against the floor, and shattered it into several pieces. The HD disk popped out, and he picked that up and broke it in half, then stuck the pieces in his back pocket. Never knew but what they could recover stuff even if it was busted.
All done now.
He started for the door.
Steve, too stupid to know when he was outmatched, came at Tad, swinging a steel bar. Even without weights on it, the bar had to go fifteen pounds, and it would have broken something had it hit him.
Tad dodged, ducked, and the bar whistled over his head, slammed into the wall, and punched a long hole in the Sheetrock. The force of Steve’s swing buried the steel rod half its length in the wall.
Tad drove his knee into Steve’s kidney, and the big man went down as if his legs had suddenly vanished.
Nobody else got in Tad’s way as he left the building.
He headed for his car.
Nobody came after him. Just as well, too. He had enjoyed wrestling with the folks in the gym, and if they’d come out for him, why, he would just have had to oblige ’em.