Kaleidocide

by Dave Swavely

  I said okay, and Jon wisely changed it to “He said okay.”

  “Sorry for calling you a thing,” she said to him, her tone softer now. She took a step toward him and raised her hand slightly, like she might touch his shoulder, but then looked at him again, hesitated, and stayed where she was. “Everyone please bear with me. This is a lot for me, on top of being pregnant and all.”

  “So do you understand what I explained about the danger of a traitor?” Terrey asked her with a gentle voice. He gestured around the room at the new team members. “And how these are the only people who couldn’t have been approached by the Chinese, because they didn’t know Michael before?”

  “I understand,” she said, and rubbed her belly a bit as if to remind them all to be patient with her.

  “Good,” he said, back to business, and looked around at everyone. “So follow Tyra’s instructions and be prepared to ‘rough it’ a bit. It could be much worse—I would prefer if we only ate food out of tubes, like the astronauts do, but Mrs. Ares would have none of that. So we’ll have to order only certain kinds of foods, with certain kinds of packaging. For example, if you wanna slip some shrimp on the barbie…”

  As he was going on, my attention was caught by one of the screens I had unrolled on the wall, which had been unused until now. It started to flash with a jumble of data that seemed like a lot of computer code with some Asian letters and a little English, and then it coalesced into some English words:

  YON: I CAN SWITCH YOUR VOICE TO THE HOUSE SPEAKERS IF YOU WANT TO TALK TO ALL OF THEM.

  I assumed this was coming from one of the triplets, because other than Min they were the only ones with the capability of thought communication, and it wouldn’t have been in character for the big bodyguard to concern himself with anything but security. I didn’t recognize “Yon” as one of their names, so I thought it was either a nickname or not a name at all, but just happened to appear where a name would usually be.

  “How can I answer you?” I said aloud, to see if she could hear me.

  “What?” said Jon, in the meeting. Terrey stopped his exposition, and looked at him until Jon said “Sorry,” and then Terrey continued talking.

  “Sorry, Jon,” I said. “I was talking to someone else.”

  YON: USE THE KEYBOARD appeared on the screen, so I pulled my chair closer to the paper-thin device I had unrolled on the desk, and typed in “That would be nice, but I might want to talk to the double only sometimes.”

  YON: I WILL SET UP SO YOU CAN TOGGLE EASILY.

  I typed “ok,” and sure enough, the screen soon contained two icons, one for Jon and one for the room, and a note to use the arrow and select keys to choose which one. The room icon was currently selected, and without thinking I said “Thank you,” which was broadcast to everyone and caused Terrey to stop his speech again and look up in the air as if to say, “Where did that voice come from?”

  “Sorry, Terrey,” I said. “I’m on the house channel now, so Lynn doesn’t have to talk to … that thing.” A few of them chuckled, and Terrey finished his spiel.

  YON: YOU ARE WELCOME appeared at the top of the screen, above the icons, and then disappeared.

  “What about our bananas?” Lynn asked, when Terrey was done. “They’re not packaged and sealed in groups. So does that mean she has to take a bite of each one before we eat it?”

  The bioengineered, organic bananas (or “bigananas,” as we called them) were a staple in our home, since recent medical discoveries about potassium and B6 had proven them to be one of the healthiest foods, and they had also turned out to be very compatible with the new methods of adding nutrients and medications to food, rather than taking them as pills.

  “Yes, but she can cut off an end and then test it,” said the triplet who would be training Tyra, showing a domestic sensitivity that I had not expected from a cyborg, even a female one.

  “We have to have our bananas,” Lynn said, with a nervous laugh, and then looked up at the ceiling. “Right, Michael?”

  “Right, sweetheart.”

  “Funny you should mention that,” Terrey said. “Because one of the kaleidocide attempts I researched included poisoned bananas. I’m not kidding. They found them after the target had already been killed by another method. Apparently the thick peel prevented the poison from being detected by the scanners.”

  I could see Lynn gulp after hearing this, the danger seeming much more real and closer to her now.

  “Okay,” she said, “we’ll hold off on the bananas until this is over.”

  “So San will take Tyra to the kitchen and get started on her little tutorial,” Terrey continued, shooing the ladies off. “And now we have to talk about a sniper. Along with explosives, which we’ve pretty much ruled out—around here anyway—a sniper is most likely to strike at the beginning. Like a bomb, he or she could have been fixed in a spot before we were aware of the threat and put the extra security measures in place, and now be waiting for a good opportunity. But they can’t wait too long, because the body can only stay stationary and awake for so long without impairing ability. So if there is a sniper in place, we’re looking at a strike within the next couple days.

  “The longest distance currently possible for a rifle, even if we figure in the possibility of a secret Chinese upgrade, is less than three thousand meters with a straight line of sight. Fortunately, with mostly open space on the hills around here, and mostly vineyards within that range, it won’t be too hard to scan and clear. It would be even easier if all we had to check were the line-of-sight locations, but unfortunately with the possibility of them using guided bullets, we’ll have to check everything within two thousand meters, because that’s the range of self-guided bullets, and they can be fired from anywhere, and curve around obstacles.”

  “But they have to be tagged with a laser,” Stephenson spoke up. “By a spotter who transmits to the shooter.”

  “Right,” Terrey said. “And the laser sight has a direct-line range of up to five thousand meters, so if we have time we’ll look at line-of-sight locations that far out, in case we might find a spotter first and eliminate the threat that way. But our first priority is everything up to two thousand, and line-of-sight up to three thousand. We’re already using the Eye to scan everything out that far, both visually and using its weapons location capabilities. But as you probably know, there are limitations to satellite systems, and people like we’re dealing with are aware of them. So my lovely ladies are also using the Eye and other tools to calculate every possible sniper location within range, and we’re going to send out our mates here to investigate them personally.” He gestured to the remaining two triplets first, and then to Korcz and Stephenson. Then the short man became visibly excited when Terrey added, “The locations will be downloaded into the nav program in your aeros, which will take you right to them.”

  “You’re gonna let us…,” Stephenson said, then was thinking about whether to say more, and I knew what he was thinking about.

  “Yes, we’ll let you fly our aeros,” I said through the house. “But I have to tell you what your partner already knows, because he used to work here, that our surveillance system sees everything you do. If you try to go anywhere you shouldn’t with the aeros, or even mess with them thinking you might sell some information about their engineering, you will be fried right where you sit, and the whole car will self-destruct before it gets into anyone’s else’s hands.”

  Those security measures had been instituted by Saul Rabin, of course, to remain until such a time that BASS decided to share the secrets of the Sabon antigravity technology with others. The only way they could be turned off was by me, or Min, or our designated successors if we should be killed.

  “In the meantime,” Terrey said, “until we finish our sweep, or actually find and neutralize a sniper, anywhere within view of a window in this house is a potential danger. That’s why we’re meeting in this inner room now. So Michael…” He was speaking to the double. “You should stay in the base bel
ow, and Lynn, you should, too.”

  “Oh, boy,” she responded in a flabbergasted voice. “Can’t you secure the windows somehow so I could stay in the house?”

  “We could OWCH up all the windows,” he said reluctantly, “but that would be a pain, and might tip our hand to a keen observer earlier than we’d like to.”

  “Do it,” I said to Terrey, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to budge Lynn on this one.

  “I suppose we can,” he said, probably realizing the same thing, then addressed Lynn again. “If you insist on staying in the house…”

  “I insist,” she said.

  “What colors are we looking for?” Stephenson asked Terrey. “There’s a color associated with each method of assassination, right?”

  “Yes, but they’re assigned by Sun in a ritual he conducts, so they’re not always the same ones, or attached to the same methods. In one of them, the bomb was red, which kinda makes sense. But in two of the others, the envelope with the gas and the assault team were each blue, which seemed pretty random to us.”

  “And the poisoned bananas were yellow,” Lynn said.

  “What was the color of the traitors?” Korcz asked.

  “Now that has been fairly consistent, as far as we can tell,” Terrey answered. “All the traitors seem to be associated with black in some way. When the lover poisoned the one man, she was wearing black, and the poison itself was also black.”

  “You are wearing black,” Korcz said to Terrey. This didn’t phase me in the least, because I wore a lot of that color myself. It was par for the course for former special forces like us, because we were always ready for something to happen, particularly at night, when we might need to conceal ourselves.

  “I guess I am, mate,” Terrey laughed, as he looked down at his clothes. Then he looked at the big bald man, and his eyes narrowed. “But do you think that if I was a traitor, I would wear black at the same time I was telling you that traitors wear black?”

  “Mebee,” Korcz said. “You could be doing … ah, what is it? Reverse psychosis?”

  Terrey laughed again, but then said to Korcz, “You’re wearing black, too, mate.” He said this more seriously, in almost a confrontational manner, but then added, “And Tyra has black skin.”

  Korcz nodded in agreement and dropped the subject. But this was the first small seed of the suspicion that would grow between the two of them.

  21

  HEGEMON

  After the briefing was over, Min took Korcz and Stephenson to the aero bay in the base below the house, to send them out on their sniper search. Terrey asked Lynn which rooms in the house she most wanted to use, and told the two remaining triplets to secure those windows first. Lynn asked about talking to me on the net, and he assured her that the house systems, my netkit, and even our glasses had been routed through the Fortress Cloud and were safe. “But don’t call him from anywhere else,” he added.

  “I’ll take Jon with me to the base while I supervise the sniper search,” Terrey said. “So if there’s one watching, he won’t see Michael in the house. But stay away from the windows anyway, until the Shimmies are done securing them.”

  “Okay,” Lynn said, half-nodding. “Michael, I’ll talk to you in our room. I have to go to the bathroom … again.” She had to do that a lot lately—one of the plagues of pregnancy.

  I switched off my view of the empty room after Lynn headed up the stairs, and Terrey and my double disappeared in the other direction. After a couple minutes, a bleeping and blinking icon informed me that Lynn was calling me, so I opened the link and could see her waddling around our room, making the bed as she talked to me.

  “I should probably sleep some, because I didn’t much last night,” she said, “but I’m too worked up. I hope all this doesn’t affect Lynley.”

  “She’ll be fine,” I said. “Let me see her.” Lynn turned toward the side of the room where I was displayed on a 2D holoscreen, and where my voice was being broadcast from as well. She had the net-room equipment configured this way, because she didn’t like the total immersion of a full 3D holo surrounding her.

  She lifted her shirt a little and pulled down the elastic wasteband of her pants so I could see all of her belly. Then she took her phone out of a pocket and opened the BabyView app, moving it around near her belly button as it showed our little girl from different angles on the small hologram it projected.

  “Awww,” I said, “I miss her already.”

  “How about me?” she said as she turned off the phone app and put her clothes back into place. “Where are you?”

  “Of course I miss you,” I answered the first question, not wanting to answer the second.

  “Good,” she said, and asked again: “Where are you?”

  “Like Terrey said, I’m not sure you should know.”

  Fortunately for me, another issue came up as she moved closer to one of the windows in the room, to look out of it. She was standing beside it, more than in front of it, but it still gave me the opportunity to change the subject.

  “Terrey said you should stay away from the windows, Lynn.”

  “Is it really that much of a danger, or is your friend just being overcautious?” She said this as she moved closer to the wall next to the window, ignoring my warning and peering out of it guardedly.

  “With a good location and a cyborg eye linked to the rifle sight, they can be accurate within an inch from almost two miles away.”

  “Sounds like some of the movies you watch,” she said, referring to the ones she didn’t. “Besides, they want to kill you, not me.”

  She leaned closer to the glass at the edge of the window, studying the lower hills near the house, and the valley with the vineyards beyond that, for any sign of this phantom killer, and … BAM! A sudden impact shook the window and made her jump back and grab the baby with both hands. Then another slam startled her again, and a dark shape appeared outside the window. But then it became clear that it was one of the triplets, who had climbed up the wall to the second-story window like a spider, and was anchoring herself next to the window so she could install the OWCH security measures on it.

  “Oh, God help me,” Lynn said with a gasp, using a phrase she had learned growing up at Mrs. Rabin’s orphanage, but didn’t really mean.

  “That’ll teach you,” I said, smiling a little despite my concern for her nerves and the baby, both of which she now addressed.

  “She can’t take much more of that kind of stress.”

  “They can take a lot,” I said, “and she’ll have to. This isn’t going to be over anytime soon, unless of course they get me. We have to hang in together and make it through—”

  Then I heard another loud crash, this time not from my house on the video where Lynn was, but from another room in the vineyard cottage where I was.

  “Hold on a second, Lynn, I’ll be back.”

  I stepped quickly toward the door of my room and moved one of the boas around to the front of my belt as I passed through it.

  In the living room, Angelee was picking a tall decorative lamp off the floor while her little boy stood nearby, looking guilty. Some of his toys were spread around on the floor, but he obviously had gotten bored with them and decided to push or climb on the lamp.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, straightening up and brushing the black hair from her face. She gestured toward the kitchen. “I made you some coffee.” She moved toward the kitchen, keeping half an eye on her son. “I couldn’t find any food to make you breakfast, but there was some of this in the cabinet.” She held up an opened bag of Tara’s fancy Blue Mountain beans.

  “Thanks,” I said, and sent a silly little wave toward the boy, to put him at ease. “You’ll have to get some groceries for us today.” I reached in my pocket as I moved toward her, and she met me halfway with the coffee, bowing slightly and placing it on the island counter near me. For some reason, a recent episode popped into my mind when Lynn had been cranky and told me, “Make your own coffee.”

&nb
sp; “Here’s some cash,” I said, handing it to Angelee. “Get whatever you want, enough to last for a week or so. Whatever you and Chris like to eat and drink … I’m not picky.” I was rather picky, actually, but I didn’t want to make this hard for her.

  As she took the money and our hands touched briefly, the look in her eyes grew more longing, and before I knew it she lunged toward me and was hugging me with a ferocity that was surprising for a woman her size.

  “What are your favorite meals?” she asked, her accent muffled because the side of her face was pressed against my chest. “I’ll cook for you like I did for Peter.”

  “No, really. Anything is okay with me.” I didn’t know what to do with my hands while she was attached to me like this, so I patted her back gently. But when I did, she seemed to take encouragement from it, and pressed in harder with her whole body, and maybe even certain parts of it. I was hoping it was my imagination, but then remembered what she had said the night before about her version of “getting married.” Now, as then, I didn’t want to disappoint her too much, but I also didn’t want this to go too far and further complicate my already complicated life. I wasn’t sure what to do, but was fortunately “saved by the bell” when the glasses in a case on my belt started buzzing with an incoming call.

  “Oh, no,” I said, breaking away and fumbling for the glasses. “Lynn.”

  “It’s Angelee,” she said, straightening her shirt and her hair again, only slightly embarrassed. “My name’s Angelee.”

  “Right. Angelee.” I let it alone. “I have to take a call in my room. Why don’t you take the car and find a store.” I backed toward my room. “Take Chris with you. There’s a child seat in the back of the car, it’ll come out when you activate it on the dash.” I looked up at the ceiling and spoke to the house. “Vera, the next person who asks you to unlock the front door will be Angelee. Please key her voice and allow her full security access.”

  “Certainly, Michael,” the house answered. I nodded to the girl, as if to ask if she understood what to do, and she nodded back.