Flash

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  I drove carefully, but didn't see any overt tails. That didn't mean much.

  As I swung the Altus into the covered carpark at the back of the Tejas Grande, I was watching, using some of the implants that no one had had the nerve to ask me to have deactivated after my resignation over the Guyana mess.

  There were two of them waiting in a gray Magan, in the shadows of the second line of columns. That posed a problem. I could have avoided them, but then I might not have spotted them the next time. On the other hand, I didn't know what equipment they had. I could step out of the Altus and be potted by a single shot from an old-style projectile rifle, the sniper version.

  Still... the pair looked more like muscle, and that probably meant I was to be beaten to death, a smash and grab ... hapless tourist or what have you. People asked questions when someone got shot with exotic weapons, and I doubted Zerak wanted that kind of attention. People deplored muggings and beatings, but who would care if an ascendent consultant got mangled or killed? Ascendents were supposed to be above that, and if they weren't, it was their fault.

  So I turned before I got to the pair, doubled back down a side lane, and parked, then ducked and eased out the door, shutting it quietly and slipping back behind a pillar. I pulled the sections of the slingshot out of my boots and assembled it, waiting for company.

  The Magan pulled up in front of the Altus, blocking it.

  Maybe they were just hotel security.

  Not exactly. They were wearing blend-ins, and without the Marine enhancers I would have had a hard time seeing them. They also carried neuralwhip, the ones with the heavy butts, which meant enough power to fry my nerves permanently.

  I never liked that sort of thing. But I was patient. Just in case there was a third goon watching the first two.

  There was. He was to my left behind another pillar. I remained absolutely still.

  'Trigger's gone. Like that."

  "Can't have gone far. Elas'd have got him."

  I kept waiting. The two studied the Altus, then began to move back toward me, looking from side to side.

  Thwick. The sound of the slingshot sounded like thunder to me, with my hearing enhanced to the max, but neither looked up at the sound.

  The one on the left, clutched at his chest. "Frig! Something stung me ... Like a firebee."

  "Can't penetrate these—"

  "Tell it..." The tough pitched forward.

  I had the second dart in position. The other goon stood at the rear quarter panel of the Altus. So I nailed him as well. He just looked down, then pitched forward.

  The third one, the one who'd been to my left panicked, and started to run.

  He was slow, and I ran faster, fast enough to get close enough for a good shot.

  He turned, yanking out the neuralwhip, and brandishing it. They don't work unless you're within five meters, ten meters at the outside for lethal-class weapons. I wasn't, and he looked at the dart in his chest stupidly, before pitching onto the permacrete.

  At that point I needed to move quickly.

  I pulled on the gloves, and found the keybloc for the Magan on the first muscle type. I only moved it far enough to make sure I could get the Altus out. I left the door open, and all three of Zerak's men sprawled on the permacrete. They'd be out for at least twenty-four hours. They wouldn't remember what had happened for about fifteen minutes before they'd been hit with the darts, and all of them would be useless as security types for at least a month with the intermittent muscle cramps and soreness. I'd have to be careful, though. I'd only been able to make off with twenty of the incapacitating darts, and ten of the fatal ones. Before tonight, I'd never used any of them. Not in nearly ten years.

  The carpark was silent, and I eased back into the rental groundcar.

  No one followed me, although I ran a devious route for a time after leaving the Tejas Grande's carpark.

  I didn't see much point in staying around Epaso, or even checking my room. After another fifteen minutes, I turned the ground car north. It was only fifty kays to Cruces. I could catch the maglev there in the morning. I was gambling that whoever was behind the Carlisimo campaign hadn't expected me to strike back. The next time, they wouldn't be so unprepared. But I didn't plan on there being a second time, not in West Tejas, at least.

  I still didn't understand the reasons why the three had been lying in wait for me. They might merely have been trying to persuade me to leave their candidate alone. But why did anyone even care? That someone did meant that a lot more was going on.

  Once I was back in Denv, I could let the hotel know where to send my clothes, if they hadn't just disposed of them. I shook my head. There was no telling what might have been planted there, and the trouble of identifying possible RFID microchips or worse wasn't worth it.

  In Cruces, I'd have to check into the most expensive hotel there; not even the hitters the government declared didn't exist wanted to end up caught in extensive microsurveillance.

  As I clicked into the guideway north to Cruces, I could feel that repressed anger. Under control, but still there.

  Too much suppressed anger—that had been another reason Shioban had left. She'd been right.

  Chapter 19

  I'd found a room at the Junipera Inn in Cruces, at twice as much as I'd have liked to pay, but with so much surveillance that the wattage could probably have fried every known form of insect or arachnid. I'd had to pay another three hundred credits to the groundcar rental people, but they agreed to pick up the Altus at the inn. And I hadn't slept well, not with all the questions twisting through my thoughts.

  On Saturday morning, I took the hotel shuttle to the maglev station. Although I was as jumpy as a spooked cat inside, I forced myself into a semblance of combat calm and surveyed everything. There was no sign of anyone like the pair I'd stunned in Epaso the night before. That worried me as well. Then, everything was worrying me.

  The maglev arrived at eight-fifteen, and it was only a third full. Even using all my enhancements, I didn't see or sense any trouble. I decided to move up to the observation level, hoping that the skyview of scenery would restore some inner calm.

  As I sat there, taking in the dry low mountains and brilliant blue sky, sipping a very weak iced tea I'd picked up from a dispenser, I had to think over what had boon bothering me ever since the incident of the night before. Mitch Zerak and his start were every bit as professional in security as they were in evading the limits of the Campaign Practices Act. That raised real questions about the three goons who'd come after me at the Tejas Grande. They'd been local hired muscle, not cydroids or "invisible" hitters brought in from Russe or Seasia or Afrique. That left three possibilities—they'd been told to warn me and to look as menacing as possible, they'd been told to kill me, or Zerak had had nothing at all to do with them. Warning me was unnecessary; in a way, Zerak had already delivered a warning. Merely roughing me up made absolutely no sense from Zerak's point of view, because if I had survived the beating there was a good chance that I'd focus attention on the campaign, the kind of attention neither Zerak nor Carlisimo wanted. So that meant, if it had been Zerak, he had hoped I'd really hurt them, even kill them. That way, I'd be the one they were trying to set up. And that meant that they knew more about me than was available on the legal levels of worldlink.

  Or someone else, not directly involved with the campaign, was involved and had wanted me hurt or killed to shed light on the campaign. Or they wanted me shut down before I finished my report on Carlisimo.

  I didn't like any of the possibilities.

  Less than an hour and a half after the maglev had left Cruces, the southern fringes of Albuquerque appeared. Albuquerque had flourished right after the Collapse, taking over the hydrocarbon energy trade and finance after the inundation of Houston and the scouring of Dallas, then slowly faded like an aging dowager as hydrogen and fuel cells had replaced much of the petroleum and natural gas. Some of the former suburbs had degenerated almost into shantytowns. That was all too obvious from t
he maglev, even at high speed.

  After a brief stop, we were on our way once more. Even with stops in Santa Fe, Pueblo, and Springs, I was off the maglev in Denv just after two o'clock on Saturday afternoon, and back in my office by three.

  I was behind in everything, except for the report on Carlisimo, and, really, I was behind there, as well, because I didn't have any comparatives on the Clerihew campaign, and I'd done nothing on the Kagnar/Erle race. Since I couldn't finish the report until after the elections, I had over two months, I told myself. Why was I feeling behind? I didn't have an answer to that, either.

  I rechecked the gatekeeper, but the messages I'd checked from West Tejas were the same, and there weren't any new ones. Reya wanted clarifications. Methroy needed to talk to me because his boss wanted the entire report redone to reflect a restructuring of the entire PPI netlink and media operation. Chelsa Glynn wondered if I required more information, and Bruce Fuller had agreed on thirty hours for his study.

  First, though, I needed to reread the SCFA white paper and get it finalized and sent off.

  And I was still wondering exactly what was going on between the Centre—or its backers—and Carlisimo—or his backers.

  I brewed a large pot of Grey tea. The rest of the weekend would be long, but at least I had a day and a half before clients and others resumed their inquiries and questions ... or expected answers.

  Chapter 20

  When I got up Monday morning, I was feeling less swamped and more in control of my various projects. I'd cleaned up and entered all the information from the Carlisimo rallies that was pertinent to the Centre study, and I'd pulled as much link information as I could on the other three campaigns, as well as instigated an ongoing search routine for all the year's campaigns.

  In a cheerful mood, I set out on my morning run with the sun just above the horizon, a hint of dew on the grass in the crisp coolness of the early morning. Midway through the course I'd set, I was chugging up the killer kay-long upgrade that left legs and lungs burning if I managed any speed. I passed a couple walking the other way on the path, and then came over the rise, momentarily picking up speed on the gentle downgrade, when I caught a glint of metal from the gazebo in the parkland to the west.

  Curious, I called up the enhanced distance vision—and then leapt sideways and scrambled down into the swale on the east side of the raised path. While I couldn't feel anything, I could sense the bullets passing overhead. I crawled down the swale another thirty meters before I eased up for a quick look. The sniper had vanished.

  "You there? Are you all right?" The words came from the man of the couple I'd passed earlier.

  "I'm fine. I thought I saw something down here, a pouch or something, and I wanted to check." I studied the pair, but didn't sense weapons or tenseness, just concern, and I eased to my feet and hurried up to the path. "Thank you."

  "That's all right. Once found a young fellow down there, had a seizure, but we got the mediservs here in time. Wouldn't have wanted something like that happening to you."

  "I appreciate it." I settled into the brisk walking pace that the two were making, staying on the west side. The sniper was definitely gone, and I tried not to shudder. It was one thing to have people shooting at you in combat or in hostile territory, but in the Boulder greenbelt?

  "You run pretty much the same time every morning, don't you? We've seen you out here for years, Dorcas and I have."

  "Before I go to work," I admitted.

  "Regular as clockwork. Sign of an organized man." He offered a friendly smile.

  "I try to be." I smiled. "If you'll excuse me..."

  "Go right ahead. We couldn't keep up with you no matter how hard we tried." He waved me on. His wife smiled indulgently.

  The rest of my run back to the house was anything but settled as I scanned everything in sight. I hadn't the faintest idea why anyone would want to take a shot at me. I wasn't having an affair with anyone's wife, and I never had. I hadn't been in any brawls, and so far as I knew, I hadn't done anything—except for following the Carlisimo campaign.

  How could someone have traveled all the way from Epaso to Denv, determined my running schedule and been waiting—in less than a day and a half—when clearly they hadn't even known who I was on Friday?

  I almost stopped in my tracks as I turned onto the last leg, to the point where I walked the three hundred meters of sidewalk to the house. That all assumed Mitch Zerak and the Carlisimo campaign were behind both attempts, but what if someone else happened to be behind them? They could have been tracking me for weeks, which meant, if both attempts were connected to the Carlisimo campaign, whoever was behind the attacker had known about me and the Study from the beginning. Was there someone among the Centre's backers who didn't want the study done, someone who didn't want to oppose it publicly, someone who was willing to murder? How would I ever know?

  I slowed as I neared the turnout, but kept scanning everywhere.

  Could it be something connected with the Prius mess? That someone had wanted pinned elsewhere? House counsels didn't call me often, and Vorhees and Reyes had a nasty reputation.

  Another thought struck me as well, the words of the older man on the greenbelt path—"regular as clockwork"? If someone were after me, I didn't need to be exposed, and if I did run, it would have to be at unexpected times.

  But who ... and why? Multis didn't go in for murder. It was bad business. They might destroy your reputation, ruin your business and contacts so you never worked again, and even turn friends and associates against you. I'd seen all of that before, but murder I hadn't seen. Although there was a first time for anything, it seemed most unlikely that they'd begin with me, and I just hadn't had contact with people other than those in multis.

  I checked the house security before I stepped inside, but it registered clean. I still tracked through every room. Should I report the incident to the safos?

  What could I report? I thought I'd seen a sniper, and I thought he'd fired something at me? No one else had seen anything, and I couldn't even prove what I'd seen, not without revealing that I'd kept the Marine enhancements, and, especially now, they weren't something I'd like to lose.

  I took a deep breath. There wasn't a good answer, no matter what I did. I decided against reporting, because there was nothing they could track about the morning's attack, and I certainly didn't want to bring up the mess in Epaso. That would certainly ensure that I would lose the very enhancements that had kept me from being potted both times.

  I stepped up the sensitivity of the house security systems and headed for the fresher to get cleaned up. After I dressed, I fixed another mug of tea and carried it into the office, where I just sat and sipped for several minutes. That seemed to help, and I still had to make a living.

  I had to come up with at least an approximation of a baseline for the Carlisimo campaign, which meant digging up the election statistics and demographics for the West Tejas district for the past twenty years, and seeing if the data were at all compatible. They weren't, because standard demographics went by enumeration blocs, and election data still went by the old ward system, and the boundaries weren't the same. That meant more statistical manipulations and more credit outlays because that information cost. I'd charge that back to the Centre when I submitted my billings, but it was on my account until then, and it wasn't cheap, not at a hundred credits per election and fifty per enumeration. Real information is never as inexpensive as people believe. What was cheap on the links was either incomplete, inaccurate, or needed a great deal of interpretation and analysis.

  By mid-morning, I'd dispatched the final version of the white paper for the SCFA and Eric Tang Wong, talked for a half hour to Reya, and finally gotten Methroy onlink to see exactly what he meant about the restructuring on the ErrorOne reports for PP Industries.

  His holo image showed a man of indeterminate age, with blond hair, deep blue eyes, a chiseled chin, and a muscular build. That wasn't Methroy. That was the tailored image that his system p
rojected. In person, he was considerably heavier, and his eyes were watery blue, and the chin was merely dimpled.

  "I got your message," I began with a smile I didn't feel. "But the system must have scrambled it. You'd mentioned a restructuring of media operations. I got that. But then ... there's something about restructuring the report to reflect the multi's reorganization."

  "That's right. The report won't do us much good if it's not targeted at the way our operations are going to be running."

  On the surface, what Methroy was saying made no sense at all. Data on prodplacing was data on prodplacing. It indicated to what degree the link placement affected total sales. So I had to get him to explain what he really meant... and needed. "Maybe you'd better tell me what changes are likely to occur at PPI and how they affect the various product lines."

  "That would only be a guess," he said slowly.

  In short, he didn't know, but he was worried.

  "Is media operations being melded into an operating division so that you have to become a profit center, rather than a service division supported by the entire multi?"

  "Oh, no. What they're doing is attributing media costs to product line profitability, and they want the media costs to fall within that range..."

  I shook my head. "I think I'm beginning to get the picture. ErrorOne has a target viewer profile that is almost seventy percent male, age range from twenty-five to thirty-three, generally married, with wish-fulfillment desires unsupported by income. In short, they can't afford all the techgadgets and travel. But PPI's microtools, like the All-1, appeal to that group. The problem you're facing, and I'm just guessing, is that the All-1 is probably less than five percent of total sales volume. I'm also betting that it has a high profit margin. But the problem is that total sales volume doesn't track costs..."