by F X Holden
“Yeah, but they’re really trendy names.”
She frowned at AJ, “That kale juice I got you was meant to be a joke.” They went inside, got in the line to order and Cassie leaned forward and asked the guy chopping fresh ingredients behind the counter, “Excuse me, the menu says ‘all day breakfast with oatmeal and homemade pastries’ - does all-day mean 24 hour?”
“All day, all night,” the guy said without looking up.
“Your ass is saved,” Cassie said to AJ.
It was a mild night. When they’d got their food and loaded up on juices they grabbed a bench outside and AJ filled her in on his Capitol adventure. He finished by explaining how weird it felt, Leon walking past him at the drone point without saying hi. He and Leon had agreed they’d wait to debrief at work tomorrow.
Cassie soaked it all in, without calling any of it crazy, which impressed AJ. She had a reporter’s capacity for adjusting to new realities, that was clear. “So Leon was worried they would try something at your hotel?” Cassie asked. “That’s why you rushed back?”
“He’s more like extra careful I think,” AJ said. “I never really saw this side of him, but he’s super suspicious of everything. I’m wondering if it’s a PCPD thing, or it’s just a Leon thing.”
“And he pulled a knife on the two people following you?” she asked, taking a delicate bite of her oatmeal. AJ was really starting to enjoy being around her. She was this hardcore skater grrl on the outside, but she ate her oatmeal with her pinky sticking out and blew on every spoonful so it wasn’t too hot. Most of the time she dressed in ripped trousers and t-shirts with a body-hugging thermal skin underneath and looked like she’d just woken up, but for their date the other night she looked like a billion creds.
“If they were following me,” AJ said. “Leon’s totally convinced. Let’s say I’m not.”
“Because why?”
“OK, there’s reasons it’s pretty hard to put any sort of covert surveillance around a cyber. Drones usually have electronic surveillance systems on board, passive and active. Drones just don’t carry cameras and mikes. Every citizen goes around sending and receiving data from the Core – biodata, comms, lifestyle and shopping interactions – and a surveillance drone sucks all that up. Citizens won’t see that unless they have the right equipment, but a cyber can see everything that touches our data-sphere, ingoing and outgoing. It’s a self-defense thing, so we can instantly react if someone tries to hack us. So if Winter was trying to track me through my data footprint, I’d have seen it.”
“You think so,” Cassie decided, then pointed her fork at him, “But maybe you aren’t thinking straight.”
He smiled, “So what does the news analyst think?”
“This journalist thinks Winter has people on his team who know exactly what you just told me,” she said. “People who would know the best way, the only way, to run surveillance on a cyber is with a simple Core trace on his drift status, and with plain old feet on the ground, just like Leon said. So, it’s very possible.”
“But why? Winter got his document, and I told him all I wanted was to be left out of it.”
“You told him that?” she sighed. “He might decide to take you at your word, take you completely out of the picture.”
“Good,” said AJ. “That’s what I wanted.”
She laughed, “No, I mean completely out. Like, chopped up into fish bait and thrown off the back of a boat into the Shifting Sea kind of out.” She saw his reaction and added quickly, “AJ, I’m joking. I’m not Leon. I don’t really think your life is in danger here.”
“Ha ha, I’m laughing, see.” AJ sank his head onto his hands and watched people walking past, “Leon pointed out no one would miss me, except my Ma.”
Cassie lifted her straw out of her cup and blew some juice at him, “Buck up, sad sack. I’d miss you.”
“Yeah?” AJ asked. “What’s my full name?”
“Evil trick,” Cassie said. “This is what, our third date? I can’t be expected to remember a cyber’s ID number until at least the fifth date.”
“But you’d miss me,” he said.
“Yeah, of course I would, AJ dot whoever you are,” Cassie said.
“Nice.”
“Get over it,” she grinned.
“Because,” AJ snuck up to it, “I’m thinking that while I sort out all this stuff with Citizen Warnecke and the congressman, maybe I should leave you out of it...”
Cassie stopped in the middle of lifting a spoonful of food to her mouth and put it down again, “Leave me out?”
“Yeah, you know, not get you involved. Like, maybe we just put things on hold until this all blows over?” AJ said hopefully.
Cassie picked up her spoon again, let oatmeal drop off it into the bowl while she thought about it, not looking at AJ. “Uh, no. Nope,” she said at last. She put down the spoon, lifted her jacket off the back of her chair and looked at AJ now. “You done? Let’s go.” She swiped her thumb to pay and walked off without waiting.
That had gone well. AJ gathered up his own things slowly and caught up with Cassie pacing down the street. “You’re angry,” AJ guessed.
But Cassie didn’t answer. She stopped, grabbed AJ by the collar of his jacket and pushed him up against the wall of the nearby building. Her face was inches from AJ’s and her eyes asked a question. When AJ didn’t pull away, Cassie put her hand behind his neck and kissed him and AJ felt his whole body fill with heat. Cassie stepped back again. “You want to put that on hold?” she said.
She’d picked AJ up at the drone port in black leathers on a red Scarlatti 750 watt Supersport she’d bought for 3,500 creds a few months earlier. “L-twin, Desmo air cooled, 22,000 miles, one owner, pillion seat…” she’d told AJ with a smile as he stood back and looked at it. “A bit clunky in the low gears, but smooth as butter once you’re rolling. Tell me you rode on the back of a road-planer before.”
He’d looked at it curiously, having never seen one up close before. The road-planer didn’t look much different from a racing-planer, except that the engine torque was street legal, the ice blade on the front was adjustable for both on and off-road driving, and unlike a racing marque, it had an optional onboard AI pilot. It looked low and lean and ridiculously fast.
“That would be no,” he’d said, taking a helmet from Cassie. “You are the first person I ever met who owned one.”
“Well, keep your eyes closed then,” Cassie had said. “You’ve got good balance. Just go with my lead, feel the machine, stay cool,” she’d said.
“And what happens if I open my eyes and get totally uncool?” AJ had asked, watching as Cassie put her leg over the saddle and kicked the stand free.
“Well, we lose our balance like that, it’s called a battery slap, and you don’t have to worry about it,” she said.
“I don’t?”
“No. At the speed we’ll be going, if we get into a battery slap, the AI won’t have time to react and you’ll be dead before you even know it,” Cassie had said, pulling on her helmet.
They’d survived. Cassie wasn’t a maniac, she gentled the planer into the curves until AJ got a feel for it and it was only as they got up towards the Sea Gate district that she opened it up a little, weaving between cars on the freeway, just to show AJ what it could do. What she could do. AJ was a little freaked at the idea she was doing the driving, but once you got used to that, it was kind of fun. But then, as a guy who liked to surf gas spouts on sub-zero seas, he had a strange idea of fun.
After they kissed outside Lean and Green, Cassie insisted he take her night surfing.
“It’s been a big day,” he said. “Maybe tomorrow?”
“You could be dead tomorrow, but you’re still alive now,” she said with a straight face. “It’s Saturday night and I want to go surfing.”
They went down to the Sea Gate, and spent a couple hours on the sea. It was a different sea at night. Scarier, but more beautiful with it. Ice floes glowing, spouts phosphorescent with algae.
Like it always did, the sea helped clear his head, restore his perspective. Everything looked simpler, if you just took a sea level view on it.
Cassie dropped him home sometime around three a.m.. “You know, you didn’t totally suck, as a pillion rider,” she said. AJ thought about asking her up to his place, and the vibe was right, but being honest, he had some thinking to do. And sleeping.
“That surf was exactly what I needed to get my flow back,” he’d said. “Look, would you like to…” he was looking up at his place, but not sounding like he was trying too hard to sell it.
Cassie had leaned into him, given him another long kiss that left him tingling, “Yes. Yes I would,” she’d said, when they stopped to draw breath. “But not tonight. The first night I stay over with you, I want it to be me you remember.”
“Hey,” he said. “Of course it would…I have perfect recall, right?”
“No,” Cassie said. “If I went up there tonight, I’d be like, hey you remember our first night together? And you’d be all, oh yeah, that weekend? That was that crazy weekend with the Congressman and getting tailed all over the Capitol. I’d be like a post-script.”
“OK… no, but yeah…” he gave her a weak smile. “I can see how that might happen.”
“What I was thinking,” Cassie said, getting back on her planer, “Is maybe it would be a nice idea to take a trip somewhere on the holiday weekend?”
“That would be awesome,” AJ said, meaning it this time. The holiday weekend was a five-day break that marked the end of one year and the start of the next. A Tatsensui orbit around Coruscant was only 3 months, but a Coruscant lap around its sun was 385 days. When you had to wait four cycles for one New Year’s eve, you needed time to celebrate it. “East from the peninsula, or West?”
“No, I was thinking north,” Cassie said. “There’s a ride I’d like to do to Gakona, then north-east across the mountains, come back via Gambel…”
“Oh, you mean … Inland. On your planer?” he asked.
Cassie stuck out her tongue, “Yeah, AJ, Inland, on my planer. It would be kinda boring in a car, and kinda dangerous out on the icecap on my own.”
He looked at Cassie, and realized he’d pretty much say yes to anything the woman suggested right now, “Cool,” he said. “Supposed to be good ice yachting in Gakona.”
“You can’t take a sail on my planer AJ,” Cassie smiled.
“Strap it across my back,” he said. “Be like a, you know, an airfoil.”
“Right, we get over a hundred klicks, we’re flying,” Cassie said, going along with it. “Just fly right over the other traffic.”
AJ thought about it. “OK, I suppose they got places there we can rent a sail,” he said. “I’m in.”
He couldn’t see how it was ever going to happen, but that was the least of his problems right now.
He decided that breakfast next morning at Fatty’s would be a nice normal way to start a Sunday and put a full stop in the crazy day he’d just left behind. He walked over there and looked around, saw a couple guys he knew and … Warnecke.
The guy was nursing a coffee over an empty plate in a corner and looking out the window at the road, so AJ walked past him, up to Fatty at the counter. “Short black thanks Kylie,” AJ said to the barista.
“Your friend the compulsive confessor is over there,” Fatty said, nodding with his head as he leaned on the counter.
“I saw,” AJ said. “He a bit calmer today?”
“Minding his own,” Fatty said. “Came in yesterday too. No trouble.”
“Good.” AJ stayed at the bar, every now and then looking over his shoulder at Warnecke. Warnecke finished his coffee and came up to the counter and stood next to AJ.
“Can I get a coffee to go? Black, large,” Warnecke said. He looked at AJ, saw AJ looking at him, then looked away. Then back again, “Sorry, I know you?”
AJ did a small double take. He should be used to it, but wasn’t expecting it from Warnecke. “Uh, yeah. I work at Sol Vista?”
“Ah,” Warnecke said. “Right. Sorry, had a senior moment. Mind you, I never been good with faces.”
“That’s OK,” AJ said.
Fatty handed the guy his coffee and Warnecke swiped for it. He turned away, and then turned back again, “The gardener, right?”
“Service technician,” AJ said, interested to see how lost Warnecke was. Fatty was watching too. Kylie slid AJ another small coffee.
“Right, right,” Warnecke said. “Well, good. I’ll see you back at the gulag then?”
“You bet,” AJ said, lifting his coffee cup in salute.
OK, maybe his week wasn’t going back to normal after all.
AJ filled the hole in his muscles with one of Fatty’s double patty, double cheese breakfast muffins. Thinking as he ate, Cassie wasn’t that bad a surfer, for a total beginner. Girl could swim, and she had good upper body strength, so that was part of the battle. Didn’t lack confidence, wanting to get out on the sea at night; watching her reminded him of how he felt the first couple of times he ever went out on a board. Totally pumped.
She had good balance, which was a critical part. Technique, that would come, he told her. Thinking also it was nice to see her afterward on the dry side of the Gate, stripping off the heat suit, just her thermal skin underneath. Thinking it was also a nice goodbye kiss he got as Cassie dropped him home last night. World wasn’t all bad.
His reconfig had kicked in, so he compartmentalized his bandwidth. Under ten percent still dedicated to citizen interactions and his work at Sol Vista. Ten percent to running background searches and updating scenarios around Winter and McMaster and Warnecke. The rest he allocated to research and analysis related to the Q-programmer Farley, the guy who had died out on the ice.
As he stepped outside, he sensed someone standing by the door to his right and automatically took a step to the left, looking up a bit startled.
Leon was standing there.
“Didn’t want to interrupt,” he said. “We need to talk.”
10. THE PROBLEM WITH TROY
“I screwed up,” Leon said. “No excuses, it is what it is.”
They went back to AJ’s apartment, two blocks back from the Boulevard and about 2 miles from Sol Vista. The place worked for AJ. Yeah, it was a tiny little studio over a convenience store, but his 280 creds a week included a storage unit where he could put his kayak, spare fan blades and old boards. And it was only about 20 minutes from the Gate, which made the 30-minute queue to get out onto the sea more bearable.
Leon looked around himself as they went up the stairs to AJ’s place, taking in the smooth red concrete walkways, flowering bushes and palm trees. “Now I see why you never invited me over,” he said. “Don’t want me bringing down the tone of your neighborhood?”
“Ha ha. There’s all types here,” AJ told him. “Singles like me, some couples with kids. Guy over there, with the sun deck,” he pointed at the apartment opposite, “Runs the surf shop on Pearl, gives me ten percent.”
“Wow, ten?,” Leon said. “He sell them off-world Tropical shirts? The really colorful ones? Get you to buy them, I could save me ten percent?”
“Surf shop,” AJ repeated. “Mats, blades, leashes, wax, heaters, fins … no Tropical shirts. You want coffee?” AJ started his machine, got it to grind out a couple of cups, handed one to Leon and sat down on his sofa. “And you screwed up, how?”
“OK, so, while you were laying back in your seat eating the complimentary pretzels and watching the in-flight VR,” Leon said. “I put in a couple calls to some friends, got some background on your new buddy Troy McMaster.”
AJ remembered the shark-like eyes of the Congressman’s minder. “Not good?” AJ didn’t really have to ask. He kind of guessed already that McMaster wasn’t your average executive assistant.
“No. He’s former CCS,” Leon said. “Now runs his own private security company. They do ‘threat management’.”
“Threat management?” AJ asked. “Which is…”
<
br /> “If the Congressman feels threatened,” Leon shrugged. “They remove the threat.”
“And CCS? I never heard of it,” AJ said.
“Commonwealth Covert Service. You aren’t supposed to have heard of it. It’s the covert arm of Planetary Defense. They work together with Tatsensui Special Investigations to do the stuff no one else can get done.” Leon explained. “They’re the ones took down the New Syberia shield in the war.”
“You aren’t cheering me up,” AJ grumbled. “I was on a good vibe until I walked into Fatty’s. Should have stayed in bed.”
“Yeah well, sucks to be you right now,” Leon said. “I’ll admit that. How we screwed up, I thought Winter had hired some kind of B team. And maybe they were. But this McMaster guy, if he’s still plugged into his old network which I assume he is, gives Winter massive scalability if he wants to take this to the next level. I’m talking intelligence assets, cyber, comint, cache hackers…”
“Talk like a normal person Leon,” AJ said, already sipping his third coffee of the day and feeling worse by the minute. “CCS, Cybercommand, cache hackers, NS shields; I don’t want to have to drift just to keep up with you.” What he meant was he didn’t want to have re-task any of his new bandwidth, but he hadn’t let Leon in on that.
“OK, it’s like this. You got to assume, from now on, this McMaster guy knows everything about you and can access every detail of your life. Your comms? He’s listening. Your VR unit? He’s already downloaded the entire history of every VR show you ever watched, every game you played, every message you ever sent or read. And that little game we played with him in the Capitol, he’ll know all about that pretty soon if he doesn’t already, and he won’t be happy.”
“I barely ever use my VR unit,” AJ said. “And I mostly talk work on my earbud.”
“You got secrets AJ, everyone does. If he wants to badly enough, he could get someone to cache hack you, pull out all your audio-visual uploads. Put in some intercept code so that every interaction you ever have with Warnecke, or with me, he’s seeing it through your eyes.”