Flash

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Traffic on the side streets, headed into old Denv, was light enough that I reached the Larimer Square area by four-fifty-five. Once there, I parked the Jacara in the lot for the antique bookstore, a place called the Worn Cover. I'd only been there a few times, but hadn't cared for the patronizing attitude that seemed endemic to the management, such as it was. The clerks, real people and not servies, were always nice. Still, no one was going to look in their carpark for a maintenance worker.

  The two cases came out of the trunk, along with a cap that partly shaded my face, and I walked out through the back side of the lot and into the rear serviceway behind Larimer Towers.

  Another tech, in gray, nodded as we passed. "Careful ... Feras is in a bad mood."

  "Thanks for the tip." I returned the nod.

  At Larimer Towers, almost all the security was on the outside. That meant that even maintenance types had to go through the main entrance for screening. That was fine with me.

  The security guard—presumably Feras—growled at me. "Don't you guys ever get here earlier?"

  "We do the best we can," I replied, offering the badge that indicated I was a maintenance engineer for Sajin. "Here's the work order."

  The security guard waved me through. "Just get it done before people start coming home."

  "Do what we can."

  I took the service lift to the eighth floor, and made my way to the utility boards. Before I did anything, I pulled on a pair of thin impermeable gloves. Then I installed a standard power cutout—the kind that at least a dozen storehouses had. Mine had been bought years before, but it still worked.

  I set the cutout for five minutes, flicked it on, and then walked around the corner until I got to 805. There I set down the kit I carried and knocked. "Utility service." The other hand held the slingshot at my side.

  Without power, Maria Delorean had two choices. Not open the door, or open it and find out what had happened to her power. She was in a secure building, and nothing had ever happened in Larimer Towers. She opened the door.

  "What's the matter?" Maria Delorean was blonde, extravagantly curved, with a calculating, but partly-vacant look that suggested a woman all too willing to be kept. Her words conveyed great annoyance. "What did you people do?"

  "There's been a problem with your power." I could sense there was no one else in the conapt. "We wanted to let you know." As I spoke, I fired the dart into her. She looked down stupidly, then tried to close the door and reach for the wrist bracelet that was a stunner. She wasn't quick enough for either.

  Surprisingly, she didn't scream, but maybe she knew that the Towers were soundproofed to the extreme—one of their enticements to tenant-owners. I got inside and immobilized her until she dropped unconscious. Then I closed the door and dragged her into the bedroom. Where I laid her out on the bed. The spread was some sort of gold fabric that was meant to convoy taste and wealth, but looked tacky, at least to me.

  The next item was to find a weapon. I could have used one of the lethal darts, but I wanted to use something that Maria had in the conapt, and she was the type who would keep something. I'd guessed right on that. There was a slimline exploder in the night table. It was unloaded, but the ammunition was in the second drawer.

  By then, the power was back on, and I did some quick work on the gatekeeper to erase the minute or so that showed my presence. I turned off the vid-system, found some words and rigged the message on the auditory loop. Then I put the gatekeeper on local, attuned only to the door.

  I actually had almost fifteen minutes to spare. Waiting was always the hardest part. I tried not to pace. At five forty-three, the security system acknowledged an entry, and the conapt door opened, and then closed.

  "Maria?" called Vorhees.

  "In the bedroom," the system said on cue.

  He walked right inside, and I shot him with the slimline, right through the chest, close enough to the heart that it made little difference. I fired a second shot through his shoulder.

  He took two steps, trying to cry out. There was a sort of gurgling sound, and he pitched forward onto the gold bedroom carpet.

  I put the gun in Maria's hand and fired twice more. There would be enough residue, and the slug-darts in the wall would attest to Maria's erratic aim.

  After that came the details. I blanked the auditory message, and fried the system before I left. Carrying my kit, I walked down the service ramps and back outside, nodding to the security type as I left. Vorhees's driver was sitting in the Altimus Grande in the lower level. I didn't nod to him, but just kept walking.

  No one even looked as I got into the Jacara. I did use a bearercard to pay for the carpark. That way, there was no trace to me directly.

  I began the drive out to my own house.

  The physical evidence would show that Maria was hysterical and that she'd fired four shots. If someone discovered her before she woke, that was fine. If she woke with the weapon in her hand and Abe dead on the floor, that was acceptable, too. She wouldn't remember anything, and the dart would have long since dissolved. Unless someone asked for a blood test within an hour or two, there wouldn't even be enough traces to determine the precise source of her disorientation.

  I didn't feel terribly sympathetic to either one. She'd probably end up a permanent servie one way or the other, but she'd been living off Vorhees for years, and he'd been killing people who'd given him trouble for even longer. The system had failed to deal with Vorhees. So I had been forced to, and, whenever I thought about it, it just made me angry. I really didn't have answers, because what I'd done wasn't legal, and I didn't like acting as judge, jury, and executioner. But one thing I had learned in the Marines was that there were times when there was no right answer, and when doing nothing in order to profess innocence was the worst possible course of action.

  Now ... if I could only work out a way to deal with Deng, Alistar, and the PST/MultiCor group.

  I reopened the link to Central Four, but didn't say anything.

  The outbound traffic was heavy, and I didn't get to the house until almost seven-ten. I'd just pulled up in front.

  Jonat. You've been unusually quiet.

  I've been unusually concerned.

  There is a report that someone has contacted Mahmed Kemal to take care of a "troublesome cendie."

  You wouldn't be telling me that if you didn't calculate that I'm the troublesome ascendent. Is there any real evidence? I checked the house security, then stepped inside, carrying the kit.

  None. There never is. How did your meeting go?

  About all I can say is that it went as I thought, and there isn't much chance of more business there. That was also true. What do you suggest I do about Kemal?

  Be very watchful.

  Sometimes, you are so helpful.

  As you well know, Jonat, Central Four is very limited in certain respects, just as you are in others.

  If that wasn't a veiled reference that suggested Central Four knew I'd been up to something she didn't want to know, I didn't know what was. We all have our strengths and weaknesses. How is Paula?

  Much stronger. She is sleeping at the moment.

  I'll talk to her later, then.

  As I talked to Central Four, I disposed of the gloves, cleaned the sleeves of the blend-ins, stored the maintenance kit, and changed back into my own clothes. I even spent a few minutes doing some more work on Central Four's equipment before I started back to Shire and the children. They'd still be peeved, but Deidre would be relieved that I wasn't all that late.

  Chapter 69

  Yenci stepped out of the maglev shuttle, into the cold early evening winds, a wind that promised snow that had yet to arrive. She crossed the maglev platform, her eyes scanning the space beyond the security gate. Two electrocabs were lined up, waiting. Beyond them the lights revealed an empty street.

  Still studying the area beyond the gates, the suspended safo walked quickly through the security area and turned left, heading eastward.

  "Need a ride?" ca
lled the driver of the second electrocab, a heavyset woman standing beside the open door of her vehicle under the indirect lighting that illuminated the area just outside the security gates.

  "No, thanks. Just a few blocks."

  "Suit yourself. It's cold out here."

  "I'll be fine."

  Yenci glanced up at the hum of a heavy lorry coming from behind her. After a second or so, her head jerked around.

  Thmmmm. The barely perceptible sound of a long-range stunner registered simultaneously with the loss of feeling in both legs below the knees. Yenci crumpled forward, her right hand reaching for the standard safo stunner that was no longer at her side.

  The lorry hummed toward her, across the low curb. There were two dull thuds.

  A man in a dark singlesuit scrambled from the side of the unmarked lorry and checked the body. "Dead," he called softly to the driver. "Impact got her."

  "Take the wallet and get out of here."

  The man in dark gray pulled the wallet from the safo's jacket and dashed back to the lorry.

  The lorry's tires skidded only slightly as they dropped off the curb, and the vehicle accelerated away from the figure sprawled on the sidewalk less than a block from the nearly deserted maglev station, where no electrocabs remained.

  Chapter 70

  Thursday started out much like Wednesday, with breakfast, and children off to the Academy, and me headed back north to my house. There I resumed assembling Central Four's backup equipment. I wanted the equipment ready as soon as possible.

  The night before, after putting the children to bed, I'd done a few hours work on the latest H F project for Bruce Fuller, but it had been hard keeping my mind on that.

  I'd scanned the news on Wednesday night and Thursday morning, but there had been absolutely nothing more about the ISS situation—as if the whole raid had vanished. There was a brief item about a safo being killed in a hit-and-run, but no details. The ISS thing was now less newsworthy than a hit-and-run, although Central Four had assured me that indictments had been handed down and prosecution was proceeding, if deliberately. There had been only a brief statement that Abraham Vorhees had apparently been murdered, with almost no details.

  When I arrived at my house, I checked for recent messages, since I had set up the systems to route to both the Southhills house and mine. Methroy had left a brief link, saying that his entire department was still undergoing reevaluation and that no assessment projects were likely to be authorized for at least a month. Reya had also left a message, saying that she might have a better feel for things by the following week.

  I had barely made three connections between major components— and no matter what any of the past experts had suggested, hard connections beat broadcast ones three to one for reliability—when the gatekeeper announced, Lynia Palmero.

  Accept.

  "Jonat... What are you doing?"

  "Installing some equipment. Independent consultants have to do everything themselves. That's especially true when they're struggling."

  "Did you hear about Abe Vorhees?"

  "What about him?" I had heard a sketchy report on All-News, all of a sentence jammed into the local news after the story stating that NorAm had provided shuttles for the CorPak commandos who had seized the NAR military reflector. There had been charges by Carlisimo—who else?—that the LR leadership had promised "concessions" in return for the CorPak success. What those concessions were had not been proven, but Carlisimo was charging that DomSec had known about the ISS neuralwhip shipments and had looked the other way.

  "You didn't hear? Maria shot him. That's what News-One reported."

  "Maria? The one you said was his mistress?"

  "That's right. She even gave a public statement. Something about her being so angry at him that she didn't remember doing it, but that she'd wanted to for so long..."

  I winced. That wasn't something I'd thought about.

  "I don't know," Lynia said. "She might have wanted to do it, but women who are so beaten down never do."

  "Then why did she give a public statement? No advocate would let her do that if there were any chance that she happened to be innocent."

  "I know. Maybe they're going to show that he was the bastard he was."

  "That would be good, but that usually doesn't happen," I pointed out. "The deceased was always a good family man. If he didn't happen to be, then he was good at heart and made a tragic mistake."

  "You are cynical."

  "With what I've seen, how could I be otherwise?" I managed an exaggerated and cynical smile, then asked, "How is the job business coming along?"

  "Better than I'd hoped. Klemsal decided I was worth something and offered to make my position full-time at the beginning of February. They'll pay just a little less than I was making at RezLine, and I really like the assistant director of marketing. She's no-nonsense, but honest. She likes your work, by the way."

  "Then how come she hasn't commissioned any?"

  "She's thinking about it."

  I grinned. "Good. Is there anything I can do for you?"

  "Well... yes ... I was talking to Linnet, and she was complaining that there's never been a clean, plain-language explanation of prodplacement. I wondered, with all the research you do, if you might know of something like that."

  "I do, but it's proprietary. It's also very good. That's because I wrote it."

  "Don't tease me like that."

  "The piece belongs to SCFA—the Sinese Consumer Formulator Association. The local director is an Eric Wong. I think he would probably be happy to send you a copy, if you explain that I told you about it and that it was his decision."

  "You couldn't...?"

  "No. He paid for it, and it's his. I'll give you his codes. I'm almost certain he'd be happy either to send you a copy or to send me a waiver to give you a copy."

  "You are a stickler, aren't you?"

  I shrugged. There wasn't a good answer to that.

  "I'll do that. Thank you."

  "Good luck with Klemsal."

  After that, I thought about contacting Paula, but decided against it, not being in the mood to go through Central Four, and got back to work.

  I finished everything that I could do on the assembly phase of Central Four's backup system by two-fifteen on Thursday. There was no way I wanted to start power-up and systems tests that I couldn't possibly complete before I had to leave to get Charis and Alan. So I hurried back to Southhills and sandwiched in almost an hour of work on the latest H F project, and then reclaimed the children.

  "Uncle Jonat!" Alan exclaimed, climbing into the front seat. "I got to be a frog today. It was neat."

  "How did you get to be a frog?" I eased the Jacara out of the Academy driveway and turned onto the boulevard.

  "Dr. Trevalyn took us into the interactive lab. We put on special suits, and then we were frogs. I wish I could really swim like that. Next time, maybe I can be a crane. Lora got to be a crane, and she said flying was more fun than swimming."

  "Last year, I got to be a great white shark," Charis announced from the backseat, superiority dripping from every word.

  "I'm certain you enjoyed having all those sharp teeth, Charis. Did you know that sharks can't stop swimming or they drown?"

  "Of course." More superiority.

  "And that uncles who don't like a certain superior tone can be nastier than great white sharks?"

  "I'm sorry." The contriteness was close to genuine.

  I decided against pushing the matter further. "What else happened today?"

  "Robby got into a fight with Melthezar," Charis announced. "Melthezar called him a Martian."

  "There's nothing wrong with being a Martian," I said.

  "That's what Robby said, but Melthezar hit him anyway. Dr. Thuan put Robby in detention and called his father." Charis paused. "Why do people hate the Martians?"

  "Most people who think don't," I replied. "A lot of the multis spent billions of credits to send people to Mars and to turn it into a p
lace more like Earth—"

  "They're terraforming it."

  "That's right, and the multis want to make credits back from what they spent. They're afraid they won't if the Martians set up their own government."

  "That's what Father said. He said that they wanted to make too many credits. Robby told Melthezar that he was a credit-grubbing multi-man."

  "Probably, someone in Melthezar's family works for one of the multis. What's his last name?"

  "Escher. He thinks he's important. He's not. Last year, he tried to hit me, and I belted him. He didn't tell anyone, because he didn't want anyone to know a girl beat him up."

  Alan looked straight ahead as Charis spoke.

  I'd seen an Escher on one of the charts supplied by Central Four, but I didn't recall, offhand, which multi he or she worked for. I was also fast learning firsthand what Aliora had hinted about her daughter. Up close and on a continuing basis, Charis was certainly no angel.

  Once back at the house, while the children enjoyed their linktime, I put in another hour on the H F project. In a way, it was probably better that I wasn't swamped with consulting work, but I knew I'd be talking a different line if work were still as sparse in a month. Trust fund or not, I still had my own expenses to deal with.

  After dinner, baths, and reading, and after the children were in bed, I spent some time picking up miscellaneous clutter.

  Only then did I head back to the office that had been Dierk's. I sank into the big ergochair and took a deep breath. Central Four?

  Yes, Jonat?

  Is Paula awake?

  She is.

  Paula ... how are you doing?

  Central Four says that I can come out to your house tomorrow. I'll have to be very careful. I can't lift anything. I'll have to spend the next few nights at the station, though.

  When will you become a probationary safo?

  After next week.

  What else could I say or ask? I've been worried about you.

  Central Four told me that you asked a lot. I appreciate that.