Looking for the Mahdi

by N Lee Wood

  Penley unjacked from the Net. “Your boy’s okay, Munadi,” he said laconically. “Bet he gets a thousand mash notes from the blue-rinse brigade by the end of the week.”

  He got more than that. Before the perfume-drenched love letters from geriatric widows swamped Halton’s in-box, Arlando got an indignant call from CDI about the illegal use of classified material, dire threats and stem warnings. Arlando told them to go fuck themselves. Within a month, John Halton’s ratings were high enough, I started to feel more optimistic than I had in a long time.

  I got a call myself not long after Halton’s debut. One of the sound techs called down to the editing booth where I was struggling to make my fingers finish working the board before the extra-strength aspirin etched an ulcer in my stomach.

  “Hey, Munadi,” he said. “Somebody on line four asking for Kay Bee Sulaiman. You wanna take it?”

  My first reaction was to have all the blood in my face drop to my feet. The second was to get mad as hell. Goddamned CDI sure had a lot of chutzpah. I grabbed the handheld and punched the picture, although I kept my holoscreen off. “Who the hell is this?” I barked into the phone.

  The man on the other end was a deeply tanned Arab, brown eyes widening in surprise before he squinted dubiously at the blank screen on his end. “Ah… Kay Bee Sulaiman… ?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  Then he grinned, white teeth under a dark mustache. “GBN Cairo Relay. Maybe I shoulda asked for Sailor…” His English was more than perfect, it was natural, with just the slightest spice of an accent. “Just thought I’d do a follow-up, make sure your deposit went through okay.”

  I’d never seen him before, nor spoken directly on the PortaNet’s handheld. I had just assumed he was an American expatriate; Arabs simply couldn’t be capable of speaking English that fluently, certainly not well enough to crack jokes.

  Well, hush mah mouth, Kay Bee. You’re a racist.

  After a moment, I opened my screen. His grin widened as he saw me. “I’m sorry,” I apologized. “Yes, it arrived just fine. Thanks, really, thanks a lot.” Then I blurted out, “I thought you were an American.”

  He laughed. “Hey, I’ll take that as a compliment. Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m Egyptian. Lots of Egyptians work in Cairo these days.” He eyed me for a moment before adding, “I’ll plead guilty, too. I thought you were a man.”

  I was. But how was I going to explain that one? “Anyway,” I said quickly, “you really saved my life.” An expression, for once, meant literally.

  “No problem,” he said. “Just glad to know everything’s copacetic.” We’d already broken the connection before I remembered where I last heard that.

  We repay our debts…

  It gave me chills that lasted for weeks. When I tried to contact him again, he had vanished without a trace. Nobody knew who he was or where he went.

  I never even caught his name.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  * * *

  John settled comfortably into his job, and we were slowly relaxing, once in a while even venturing outside of our boring old pseudo-suburbia (with our bodyguards, of course). We started pretending maybe we might have a chance at a normal life, a future with real freedom, when we were reminded that CDI was still out there— they hadn’t forgotten us and didn’t want us to forget them.

  John and I were out shopping downtown for who remembers what now, standing in the middle of Isako’s Department Store, everything for the contemporary American home.

  I turned around to John and said, “Hey, whaddya think of this one?” and looked up.

  Except it wasn’t John.

  It was John-sized and John-shaped, exactly—even a strong facial resemblance, but it wasn’t John. He looked down at me, arctic wastelands drifting endlessly through cold blue eyes. The thing radiated inhuman power—oily, smooth, deadly. He had the same plastic smile I knew so well.

  I stood there immobilized, clutching some gadget absolutely essential for the modem kitchen. A warm hand took me by the arm and John, my John, was standing next to me, silently regarding the other fabricant. I was shaking like a leaf, but the two of them just stared at each other, a pair of stone idols claiming the same god. The sudden rustle of bodies materializing around us indicated that our bodyguards had belatedly realized something was amiss, and there were a lot of hands being tucked into jacket armpits. A few fellow shoppers glanced at us with wary curiosity before moving discreetly out of harm’s way.

  “Joseph?” A refined gentleman with a rich man’s cultivated voice materialized behind him. I barely saw him. Some high-level Government functionary, no doubt. He was with the fabricant, not the other way around. His face was puzzled, worried. “Is there a problem?”

  “No, sir,” Joseph said, his eyes steadily locked with Halton’s. “No problem, Mr. Oberly.”

  The fabricant ignored the tense group of bodyguards surrounding us, while the Government pen-pusher tugged anxiously at his sleeve. CDI had gone far beyond the obsolete Halton series, and they wanted us to know it, to rub our noses in it. This thing could have leisurely killed every armed guard we had, barehanded, before it got around to pulling the wings off John and me. It was a soulless killing machine; we were nothing in its path.

  Then the fabricant, the Joseph fabricant, smiled tightly and inclined his head just a fraction. An acknowledgment? A challenge? A warning?

  Or maybe it was the look that Cro-Magnon man gave the last Neanderthal. There’s a new sheriff in town, boy. The last dinosaur leaves at noon. Be on it.

  The Joseph fabricant glanced over at me, turned away and left. We haven’t seen him, or any other fabricant, since.

  I thought I was the one with the shit scared out of me, John had been so cool and calm. But that night I rolled over and woke up. The bed was shaking. John was sitting up trembling violently.

  “John… ?”

  He turned to me, face pale in the darkened room.

  “Maybe it’s true, maybe the nanos have destroyed something, cut something in my brain, and that’s why I could kill Laidcliff, and maybe I could kill you and not be able to stop myself…”

  I sat up and tried to hold him. “Oh, John. C’mon, it’s okay, calm down ” It was like trying to hold on to a greased rock underwater.

  “They can do anything, Kay Bee, anything. And I can’t stop them. What if there are other people who can trigger the nanos? What if there are other nanos inside me, something worse? What if they’ve got his voice on digitape, and the phone rings sometime, and I pick it up…”

  I held him tightly, pulling his head down to my softly augmented chest, stroking his hair like a child, which in many ways he still was.

  “What if a safe falls on your head tomorrow?” I said, my cheek against his hair. “What if I get run over by a truck? What if a bolt of lightning comes through the window right this minute and crisps us both to french fries? John, if it’s gonna happen, it’s gonna happen. There’s not a whole hell of a lot more we can do than what we have.”

  “I could hurt you,” he whispered hoarsely. “You can’t ever trust me.” His tears wet my arm, and my throat suddenly ached.

  I kissed the top of his head gently. “I’ve never trusted anyone in my whole life,” I said. “So why should I start now?” His hand curled around my forearm, gripping so hard I knew I’d have bruises the next morning, but I winced and rocked him back and forth, murmuring, and let him cry.

  Maybe he’s right, maybe someday the upstairs wiring will completely short out, and he’ll turn into a drooling maniacal killer. Or maybe it was just like Mr. Slick said: What happened way back when in Khuruchabja, that’s yesterday’s news, who cares anymore? Maybe someday John’s ratings would drop, and we’d end up as a convenient auto accident on the obituary page. A lot of blue-rinse ladies would weep copious tears, but people die every day from unfortunate accidents. Maybe they’d just jerk off on watching us worry ourselves to death.

  John finally went to sleep, still holding on to me like a
life preserver, while I spent the night spinning my own “maybe’s” in my head. There really wasn’t much else we could do.

  I continued working three hours a day as John’s English feed-in puppeteer, which was about all the strain my damaged hands, nanos or no, could handle on the Net. John worked full time doing voice-overs and occasionally anchoring the Arabic, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, Finnish, Swedish, Dutch, French, Italian, German, Lithuanian and Russian-language broadcasts, which gained him even more celebrity, including a two-page article in the TV Holo Guide. The Wonder Kid from Nowhere, the Mystery Man with the Golden Tongue.

  When the news broke on Khuruchabja, I wish I could say that it had been Halton who’d been on the air. But that sort of ironic serendipity only happens in cheap fantasy novels and holoshows. We were sitting at home with our feet up on the coffee table watching the tube while choking down another of my gourmet Suzy Homemaker failures.

  The breaking story wasn’t even on GBN. We watched the excited face of Jefferson Carleby covering the hottest news flash, reporting live! From Nok Kuzlat, Khuruchabja! For TVN Cable News! I always hate to see a rival reporter get the jump on GBN, but I had to admit I was glad for Carl. I saw myself as I could have been, probably should have been, too many years ago. I wished him well.

  Just when things looked like they’d fallen apart, Ibrahim al-Ruwala had thrown a new monkey wrench into the works. The man who would be Royal President had diverted attention from the squabbling, outraged clerics (who had been baffling the hell out of most Khuruchabjans anyway, with their contradictory decrees and condemnations) by adamantly refusing to ascend the Imperial Throne—which he had only the most precarious claim on anyway—unless he was first legitimately elected by the entire population.

  To prove the sincerity of his intentions, he proclaimed magnanimously that these elections were to be overseen by an international watchdog group to ensure their absolute fairness. Khuruchabjans would decide for themselves, in their first guaranteed democratic election, who they wanted to lead them to a glorious new future. Men and women.

  Supplanted by the novelty, the controversy over the Archangel Gabriel’s reality was conveniently forgotten, and skirmishes erupted over which country’s observers should get the job, whether or not the women’s vote was in violation of Islamic shar’ia law, and who, if anyone, should run against the leading candidate. But the issue of Ibrahim’s legitimacy was neatly buried, and Ibrahim became a hometown hero for a slim majority of the voting public, the women’s vote rounding out the lead. A few weeks later, he was inaugurated as Khuruchabja’s very first lawfully elected Royal President.

  He immediately took another abrupt left turn, throwing more of the unwary off the wagon by abolishing the Royal part of the Presidency, then undercut any potential rivals by slicing up his own power base and sharing it out. Inviting the Americans to send ambassadors was more to prevent the CDI from assassinating him than it was to renew diplomatic relations. With the American public busily applauding, he sent the rest of the West into waves of ecstasy manifesting itself in promises of billions of dollars—and écus—worth of nonmilitary foreign aid.

  Shortly after this latest update, Arlando called Halton and me into his office. He didn’t seem happy.

  “President Ibrahim al-Ruwala has indicated he’d be willing to give an exclusive interview to GBN,” he announced.

  “That’s great!” I was all for it. The more attention on Khuruchabja, the better.

  Arlando wasn’t as thrilled. “He’s asked to be interviewed by GBN’s one and only Kay Bee Sulaiman.”

  Uh-oh. I wasn’t as thrilled, either. “Then we got a problem.” I had permanently retired my Kay Bee Sulaiman persona, and was plain old Kay Munadi again. Just another anonymous Broadcast Editor.

  Arlando gauged Halton. “What about you, John? You want to tackle interviewing the President of Khuruchabja?”

  John glanced at me. “I’m not sure that would be a good idea, sir,” he said quietly. “If CDI felt I was in a position to compromise them, it’s possible they might decide it worth the risk to divulge what I am and my connection to them in order to undermine the new government of Khuruchabja. And GBN.” No one would believe the fabricant wasn’t still a tool working for the CDI; John’s credibility with the public would be instantly flushed down the tubes.

  Arlando was nodding. “So let’s beat ’em to the punch,” he said calmly.

  “Say what?” I didn’t like this.

  Arlando’s smile was ironic. “We tell the exclusive inside story of daring Secret Agent John Halton and GBN’s very own Kay Bee Sulaiman, intrepid reporter, going boldly in disguise where no woman has gone before, thrown together by fate and patriotism, heroically risking their lives in order to bring out the truth from the very capital of Khuruchabja.”

  “This isn’t funny, Arlando. I ever go back, they’ll kill me.”

  “What, you had plans to buy a vacation home there, Munadi?”

  “No…”

  “Then so what?”

  “So I’ve met Ibrahim al-Ruwala. And so has John. He believes I’m a man, and he’s not going to appreciate having been made a fool of,” I said hotly.

  “He’s not going to do a goddamned thing. He’s got his own little secrets he’d like kept off the record. Think about it, Kay. You really believe he’s willing to publicly admit it was his group that cracked Israel’s Gabriel microflake? Tinkered with it in order to hoodwink his constituency and steal the Presidency?”

  No, I guessed he wasn’t. The silence grew a little strained.

  “What about John?” I asked finally. “You reveal John’s ‘secret agent’ identity, that would certainly rocket GBN straight to the top. Then what? CDI comes out and exposes him as an extremely dangerous malfunctioning biomachine? John could kiss more than his job goodbye, Arlando.” I glanced at John, his face as unreadable as ever. “How long do you think it would take the EPA to confiscate him under the Public Welfare act? Maybe pull his plug for good? I don’t really think we*re ready to take that kind of risk. We just can’t afford to tell the whole story.”

  Arlando shook his head. “Nobody even knows what the whole story is, Munadi. Do you?” He looked at John. “Do you, Halton?”

  “No, sir.”

  Arlando leaned back in his chair, leather creaking. He turned to gaze out the transparent walls of his office. Monitors and computer screens flickered, people walked by as if unaware there was anyone in Arlando’s glass cubicle. Selective blindness.

  “Kay, you’ve been in this business long enough to know the real news is not always what gets on the air.”

  Truth is just as vulnerable to market forces as any other product. Viewer appetites and short attention spans, commercial economic needs, the lack of time boiling stories down to only bare essential facts, the caprice of popular fashion, are far more powerful editors of news than simple political pressure or corruption.

  “There’s a whole hell of a lot we’re never going to know,” Arlando continued. “And for the same reason other pieces are going to drop through the cracks, to protect the innocent and a lot of not-so-innocent people from getting themselves unnecessarily killed… like you and John, just for example.” I winced.

  His voice softened slightly. “No one has to know he’s a fabricant, Kay.” He looked at Halton as he spoke. “At least not yet. Maybe not ever. CDI could cause us a lot of trouble and inconvenience, but there’s nothing illegal they could pin on us, John, and they know it. I seriously doubt they really want to kick up a fuss now.”

  John nodded. I wasn’t sure if he was agreeing or consenting.

  “At the moment, we have the upper hand. All we have to reveal is that John was actually a CDI secret agent, now honorably ‘retired’ and hired by GBN, and who was instrumental in bringing about the current political changes going on in Khuruchabja. Change that is very* popular right now. Give CDI the opportunity to take a few bows for themselves, a little noble credit for some of it. Whether they deserve it or not.
They’ve already been pushed into cleaning house. The President is still furious with their screwup in Khuruchabja, Congress is furious at the White House for trying to sneak covert actions by them yet again. CDI’ll have to be submitting their fiscal budget proposals to Congress soon and it would be good PR, which they need at the moment. It just might help to reduce some of the friction between you two and the CDI.”

  “They’ll never go for that…”

  “They already have,” Arlando cut me off coldly.

  John had taken my hand, his fingers tight and chill, but his face impassive. I stared at Arlando, speechless.

  “Jesus,” I finally squeaked out. “Who’s idea was this?”

  “Mine. They owe me,” Arlando said quietly. “Listen to me, Kay. Everyone has dirty linen they’d rather not see aired on the evening news; politicians having affairs, movie stars with drinking problems, Supreme Court Justices who like to dress up in lace garters and handcuffs. But if no laws are being broken, if it doesn’t involve the public welfare, then it’s not news. There’s a line between informing the public and invasion of privacy.”

  What’s your secret, Arlando? I wanted to ask. I didn’t because I didn’t want to know the answer.

  Arlando stared back at me, eyes hard, gauging. “A large part of news is also timing, Kay, and you should be enough of a journalist to know that. Thousands dying of famine in Africa doesn’t have the same punch during a hard domestic economic recession as a story about a dozen Americans losing their jobs because some billionaire Wall Street trader has junk-bonded a small company into oblivion. You don’t get ratings with bad timing.

  “At some point, it’s possible we may want to go ahead and reveal John’s ‘secret identity.’” He smiled thinly. “It would indeed boost our ratings, timed right. It would also take away one more threat CDI has hanging over our heads. But not now. Not all of it at once.”