Woolly kept his head down a moment longer. Then he opened his eyes and raised his head to see the monitor. Chase stopped pacing and stood looking, arms on his hips. I leaned forward to see better, as if I’d understand anything on the monitor.
Woolly nodded once at what he saw the text displayed on the monitor.
Chase and I traded a look. Chase nodded at me and bit his thumbnail.
Next Woolly entered a long series of words and symbols—a command that went on and on. He entered lots of characters, backspaced over some of them, entered more, paused, then typed more. Soon there was a single command that wrapped around almost two complete lines of text. Woolly squinted slightly and traced a fingertip over the green characters, checking, double-checking.
When he seemed satisfied, he placed his index finger over the Enter key. He let it hover there a moment, and then he pressed it.
Nothing happened for several seconds. A blank line appeared beneath Woolly’s extra-long command, but nothing else. Then, unceremoniously, there was a single, friendly beep, and a new prompt appeared. I wouldn’t have known what to make of it, but Chase clapped and said, “Yes!”
“Okay,” said Woolly. “I am—as they say—in.”
Chase came up behind Woolly, clapped him on the back, and took a knee by his side again. I got up from the corner and came up behind Woolly. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders, gave him a squeeze, and kissed his whiskered cheek.
“I don’t know what just happened,” I said, “But, it was magnificent. Well done.”
“Thanks, Al,” he said, patting my arm. “What’s got you in such a good mood all a sudden?”
“After this we look for Arie,” I said. “Right?”
“Yep. Looking forward to it.”
“I’d give anything to see him again.”
“Sounds like a sharp kid,” said Woolly.
“Oh, he is smart,” I said. “Scary-smart. Like you, Wool. You two will get along great.”
It was the first time I’d allowed myself to speak of Arie as though he might still be alive. It was emotionally reckless, I knew, but the situation seemed to call for positive thinking. If Ruby’s band of misfits were anything at all, they were positive, and it was infectious.
When Gary told me that Arie was dead, I didn’t believe it. Eventually I thought it was simply a matter of denial, of not wanting to believe, of not accepting reality. However, when Ruby hinted that Arie might not be dead after all, a question arose in my mind and gnawed at me: wouldn’t I know if he were really gone? Wouldn’t a mother know?
Woolly resumed typing his cryptic computer commands. His big hands moved with remarkable deftness over the keys. System beeps emitted from the computer and the contents of files and directories flashed on the monitor.
“We’re in business,” he said to Chase, still typing. “I’m gonna download as much as I can find, then we’ll be ready to talk to this goon you got tied up. This connection is slow as hell, though, and this computer is no Deep Blue. Tell Ruby I’ll be ready to roll in—three hours, maybe.”
“Ya got two!” Ruby cried shrilly from the other side of the room.
Woolly chuckled. “Tell her one,” he said.
I gave him a pat on the shoulder and turned to join Ruby. She was poking the goon with her toe. He moaned a little and stirred as I approached.
“Al, let’s get this dope woke up and then pump him for everything he knows.”
“Will I have to clobber him at all?”
“Only if you want to.” She chuckled.
“Okay,” I said.
The goon was awake, still lying on his side with his face caked with drying blood. He turned his head awkwardly to see us. Ruby and I dragged him into a corner and propped him into a sitting position. I sat cross-legged on the floor with him. He was pudgy, unkempt, and shockingly pale, with a reddish-blond beard of sparse curly whiskers. His gloomy blue eyes darted from me to Ruby and the others.
Ruby gathered the contents of the man’s pockets into a pile at his feet, and now she sorted through it, inspecting each item before setting it on the floor again. There was a pocket knife, a few ration cards, some keys, papers folded into fourths, and a beat-up stainless steel pocket flask.
“What’s your name?” asked Ruby.
She unfolded the papers and peered at them. It was a series of tables and what looked like computer commands.
“Phil,” said the goon. “Phillip. Phillip Carlton. Most people call me P.J.”
“Got a family, P.J.?”
“Uh huh.”
“How ya feeling’?”
“Head hurts.”
“Ya. Sorry about that. Nothing personal. And don’t worry. We ain’t gonna hurt ya no more.”
She picked up the flask and shook it. A liquid sloshed inside.
“Maybe this’ll help,” she said. “What’s in it? Sasparilla?”
“Special brew,” said P.J. with a guilty smile.
She twisted off the cap and took a sniff, but then she scrunched her face.
“Brake fluid?”
P.J. nodded. “And other things. Try it. It ain’t bad. I water it down, filter it through bread and raisins. Tastes all right.”
“P.J., it don’t matter if it tastes like cherry cola. This stuff’s got ethylene glycol in it. It’ll kill ya.”
She emptied the flask on the carpeting and then dropped it back in the pile. P.J. watched glumly as it clunked on the floor.
“I don’t want you drinkin’ that anymore,” said Ruby. She felt around in the folds of her coat and presented a flask of her own. “Here. Try a slug a’that.” She twisted the cap off and held it to his lips and he drank.
“Smooth,” he said.
“Course it is. It’s scotch. Have another.”
He drank, deeper this time.
“Who are you people, anyway?” said P.J. licking his lips. “Don’t you know how much trouble you’re in?”
“We’ll get to that,” said Ruby. “What’s this mean?” she showed him the unfolded papers.
“Just my maintenance schedule. And I was already behind when you jerks showed up. Hard enough to keep these junkers running without some chip-rippers whacking me in the face with a—what was that? A baseball bat?”
From someplace else within her coat Ruby found a large folding Buck knife. She flicked it open with a practiced gesture. The blade was as long as my hand and looked very sharp.
P.J. recoiled.
“Ah, don’t be a ’fraidy cat,” she said. “If I was gonna stick ya, I’d’a done it while you was knocked out. Gimme your hands.”
He held out his hands warily and Ruby passed the blade through the strands of network cable. P.J. shook his hands free and then sat rubbing the red grooves in the skin of his wrists. Ruby took a slug from the flask.
“Here,” said Ruby, offering it to him. He took it and drank, then gave it back.
“Tell me about alla this, P.J.,” said Ruby, gesturing with the point of her knife at the rows of computers.
“What about it?” he said with a shrug. “It’s a data center. Databases, account information, you know, for the Agency. We manage data for eight Zones from right here. Me and three other guys in twelve-hour shifts. Personal records, tracking data, ration schedules, security stuff. It’s all here on these shitty computers.”
“Ya. We done broke into your computers, P.J.” She jabbed her thumb at Woolly. “That big fella over there—he done hacked you. ’Zat how ya say it? ‘Hacked’?”
P.J. nodded.
“Ya. Well, we’re downloadin’ what we come for, so you’re off the hook for that. But, listen.”
P.J. blinked nervously.
She tilted her head in my direction and said, “My friend here used to have a family. A son. Her and him—that was her whole family. But then they took him away. Your bosses. Now she needs to get some information off’a these computers to find out what they did with him. I want you to help her. Can you do that for me?”
“What i
f I don’t?”
Ruby rolled forward onto her knees and pinned P.J. into the corner. She held the knife to his throat. Her face was close to his.
“Then I’ll kill ya,” said Ruby. “And then I’ll go find any family ya got and kill them, too.”
P.J. held still, eyes wide.
Ruby held him there for a few long moments. Then she chuckled and said, “Relax.” She eased back onto her haunches. “I already toldja I wasn’t gonna hurt ya.” She folded the Buck knife and put it away. “But ya get the point, right? We all want to protect those we love, ya know?”
P.J. sighed and nodded sadly.
“We’re the good guys, P.J., honest. Them assholes you work for—they’re the bad guys. You know it’s true. I bet you’ve seen things. How they do. The hurt they cause. Haven’cha?”
He looked at the floor.
“If ya say you won’t help,” said Ruby, “we won’t hurt ya. But if you do help us, we won’t tell no one. You got that konk on your head. You can tell your boss we knocked you out and we was gone when you come to. I can even knock ya back out if you think that’d be better.”
“Thanks,” said P.J., running a palm over his pallid face. His eyes had begun to glisten with the alcohol.
Ruby held up her flask and P.J. nodded.
He took it from her and drained it.
“Chase,” said Ruby.
“Yeah, Boss?” said Chase over his shoulder.
“Come say hi to my new friend, P.J.”
Chase rose and joined us in the corner. He shook P.J.’s hand.
“Who do you report to, P.J.?”
“His name is Chandler.”
“We know him,” said Ruby, trading a nod with Chase. “He’s a class-A prick. A real role model for pricks everywhere.”
P.J. shrugged his agreement.
Chase spoke to P.J. of Zone boundaries and security and chains of command. P.J. named Agency managers and supervisors. Ruby took notes on the back of P.J’s maintenance schedule, scribbling with the nub of a pencil, but Chase and Ruby already knew much of what P.J. revealed.
I knew two or three Agency goons by name—Gary Gosford among them. Few Agency goons ever actually introduced themselves, and aside from a couple medical techs, I’d never even spoken to an actual officer of the Agency. Ruby seemed to know almost more than P.J.
After a half hour or so, Chase said he’d heard enough. He shook P.J.’s hand again and rejoined Woolly. Ruby stood stiffly and stretched her chubby legs.
“Nice talkin’ with ya, P.J.,” she said. She put out her hand and he shook it. She pocketed the papers but returned his other things. “Just sit tight.”
He nodded sleepily.
Ruby chucked me on the arm. “Keep him company, will ya? Tell him about your boy.”
“Okay.”
Ruby turned away and directed a procession of profane encouragement toward Woolly, presumably to make him work faster. Woolly stuck to his original time estimate of one hour, explaining in his placid and articulate way that he was unable to alter the way computers worked. I turned back to P.J.
“Was it you that hit me on the head?” he said, gingerly fingering the laceration. It had stopped bleeding, but it had swelled and turned purple. It looked painful.
“No,” I said. “I was holding the flashlight.”
P.J. nodded.
“So,” I said, searching for something to say, “how long you been a goon?”
He sighed. “I’m not a goon. And it’s not like I volunteered. When I came to, they told me what to do. I’ve been coming here since then. People from gen-pop call me a goon. To me, it’s my job. I have a family, too. A wife and a couple of sons.”
“My son got sick and the Agency took him away and wouldn’t tell me what happened. I haven’t seen him since.”
He swallowed. “Sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.”
We sat there awhile.
“When was that?” he said.
“What? My son? Last month.”
“I could look him up for you,” he said.
“Could you?”
P.J. wetted his lips and looked around the room. Then he nodded. I pulled him to his feet and steadied him as he hopped to one of the workstations and knelt at the keyboard. Woolly rolled the office chair over and we set P.J. on the seat.
Ruby saw us and hustled over. “What’s going on? He helpin’ with the Arie situation?”
“He said he can look him up. Maybe we can find out what happened.”
Ruby beamed. “P.J., I knew you was all right. But no tricks.”
A wan smile showed on P.J.’s pale face as he typed. Chase came to my side. Woolly watched intently.
We stood there watching the monitor as P.J. entered a username and password. He pressed the Enter key, but nothing happened, and nothing kept happening for a minute or two.
“If this is a trick,” said Woolly, “we’re going to have a problem.”
“Is it not working?” I asked.
“P.J.,” said Ruby. “This better not be a trick.”
“No, it’s not that,” said P.J. “I’m logging into one of the central databases. It’s off-site. Our connections are really slow.”
“We’ve noticed,” said Woolly.
At last a new prompt appeared on the monitor, and we all leaned in to see.
“Okay,” said P.J. “How do you spell his name?”
I told him. He typed it.
There was another series of commands. P.J. typed almost as fast as Woolly. He hit the Enter key with an emphatic flourish.
“Okay. It’s searching. I don’t have privileges to access his full record, but I’m pretty sure it will show me his profile code. That’ll at least tell us where he’s at. If he’s anywhere, I mean. Sorry it’s so slow.”
“Woolly,” said Ruby, “you know about this profile thing?”
Woolly shook his head and nodded at the same time. “A little. It’s encoded into the chips,” he said, tapping his neck. “Right?”
“Yeah,” said P.J. “Everyone’s got a profile,” said P.J., turning in his seat and looking up at us. “It’s basically the Agency’s shorthand for a person. A summary. First four numbers are the Zone you’re assigned to. Next is your illness status—whether or not you take the serum, your dosage, annual treatment date. Next is employment status, rations, living arrangements, things like that. There’s some other codes I’m not sure about. The last few numbers indicate your age.”
Woolly raised his eyebrows and nodded approvingly.
“Wool, you want some paper to write all this down?” I asked.
“Nah,” said Woolly. Then he tapped his temple and grinned. “I got it.”
After P.J. typed more commands and we’d waited several minutes, Arie’s full name appeared, followed by the long string of numbers P.J. mentioned. Seeing his name that way—glowing green search results on a computer monitor—it almost made Arie alive again. My breath hitched, and I was suddenly as sure as I’d ever been that he must be alive.
“Okay,” said P.J. “This says he’s in Zone 1891. Where was he when he was taken?”
“In that Zone,” said Chase.
“Oh,” said P.J. “Okay, well, that’s no help, then. I wonder if he had a location account.”
“What’s that?” asked Woolly.
“You know we can track you using your ID chip, right?”
We all nodded.
“Right, well, it’s a passive system. It’s not real-time or anything. The battery’s tiny and we couldn’t handle real-time tracking telemetry for every single person, anyway. So, most people never get tracked at all. Only people who are interesting in some way—usually people who are up to something.”
“So?” said Woolly.
“So, if one of the officers wants to track a user, we have to open a location account. Let’s see if Arie’s got one,” said P.J. He typed a few commands. “Yeah. He’s been tracked.”
“Show us,” said Woolly.
�
��Okay,” he said. “But only because I’m a little drunk. I could get in a shit-load of trouble for this.”
“We really appreciate it,” I said.
P.J. produced a spreadsheet on the monitor. Line after line of information, mostly numerical.
“Here you go. GPS coordinates, times. Looks like my bosses were really interested in your son.”
“Where are all these places?”
“No way to say for sure without a GPS system and a basemap, but I’m assuming this location is your house.” He pointed to a number on the monitor that appeared most often. “This one is probably the depot where you get supplies. Look at these, though. I’m not cartographer, but these have got to be way outside your Zone. This Arie guy really got around.”
I chewed my lip.
“I assume alla you guys are chip rippers?” asked P.J.
“That’s confidential,” said Ruby.
I wanted to ask him if I’d been tracked. Or rather, how much I’d been tracked. Gary told me he knew that my chip went dead. What else did he know about Arie and me?
“We’ve got to wrap this up,” said Chase, tapping his wrist. “It’s just about quitting time for P.J. here. His replacement will arrive in about an hour.”
“Oh, yeah,” said P.J. “Hey, I know you’re busy, but will you guys tie me up again before you take off?”
“Course we will, Peej,” said Ruby. “We’re all friends now.”
“Thanks.”
Woolly held up his memory stick. “I’ve got what I came for. I’m taking off.” He headed for the door.
“Al,” said Chase, “we oughta be going, too.”
“What else can you tell me about Arie?” I asked P.J. “Where is he now?”
P.J. toggled back to the previous display. “Let’s see. Says he’s taking the serum and his treatment date is January second. Sound right?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“All right. Ration code is 105; subsistence level. That’s no help, either. Housing code—family of two, single dwelling?”
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