Single Combat

by Dean Ing

  "I couldn't wait to test your magic, curly," she vamped, letting him help her to her feet. "Let me see it."

  The long lashes flickered over his sad sheep eyes. "Here?"

  She nodded, chins aquiver, then emitted a volley of giggles as he reached for his coverall closure. "Not that, you fool," she said, staying his hand, rubbing the mat of curls over his sternum. "That I can see in your rooms—and I intend to." The pun-took on a hint of rasp: "Isn't the amulet ready?"

  "Ah." His open palm indicated the cart seat. "That is in my rooms as well. M'sieur Mills has many devices to monitor and I should be sorry to be recorded aboveground with such a thing. You however are a law unto yourself, n'est ce pas?"

  "C'est tout dire," she agreed, and vented a whoop as Chabrier sped his cart down the ramp. She clutched her bag in her lap. In it lay much of her charm: the drugs for which Chabrier, as lab administrator, was responsible.

  Inside via the elevator to the first level, then down ramps between backlit walls, fat tires squalling on clean linoleum, the air cool and tasting faintly of sidewalks after summer rain. Once during the trip—Eve knew he was taking this route as an informal patrol when they could have gone directly to the lowest level by elevator—a lank mongol hesitated in the passage to let them pass. On his middle-aged face was no trace of recognition that they were anything but machinery. He might have been a machine himself.

  "Don't you ever get cabin fever in this dump?"

  "We are all well—ah, le reclusion," he said, tardy to catch her idiom, nodding when he did. "We suffer, each in his way."

  "But you all take the same prescription."

  "In a general way." Quickly he added, "For me it is not so bad; I have you twice a month, ma petite." He nearly strangled on that diminutive term under the circumstances, but knew she liked to hear it.

  At last Chabrier reached the utmost depth of the lab and passed through the chuffing armored doors. Here was no receptionist, but a room with couches. Eve never got used to the jungle of potted greenery there, so many levels under the desert floor, fed with synthetic light and nutrients and even with subtle variations in the air-conditioning currents. Her arm laid on his, Eve swept into Chabrier's rooms to claim the chaise. "Compliments of Boren Mills," she smirked as always, handing him a package labeled PHOTOGRAPHIC FILM. It contained enough drugs to pacify Chabrier's minions for two weeks.

  Chabrier tossed it aside as though it were not the most important single facet of his existence; offered her a drink. She accepted, noting the tiniest of tremors in his hands, choosing to think it was her humming sexuality and not something else that provoked it.

  "So how goes the scale-up?" She was only making small talk. For Eve, the synthesizer was only an abstract notion, an iffy means to power. Her specialty, media, was power. She could not fathom the logic by which Mills had let his early media expertise run to seed while he chased this technological enigma—and by proxy! She had never managed much interest in synthesizers of any size until one of her spaced-out discussions with Chabrier, two months before.

  The scale-up program, Chabrier admitted with the shrug of a much thinner man, was still in Phase Two. Phase One, design analysis of the unit Mills had committed murder to obtain, had been complete for over a year. Phase Three, if it ever arrived, would be a big unit, one for which Mills would cheerfully kill millions. But Phase Two was that crucial interval between analysis and synthesis, without which Phase Three could not begin.

  Some philosophers of science virtually ignored this transition phase because, bluntly, it eluded them. Mills revealed his partial understanding—and mistrust—of it by calling it 'interphase brainstorming'. Marengo Chabrier understood the creative process better; it was he who termed it the 'gestation' phase.

  An organism recapitulates the development of its race, as a human fetus will reveal gill slits in its early growth. But the organism does more, when it mutates beyond. The change is made real, not merely potential, during gestation. A plan gestates; ideas gestate; earth-shaking social movements gestate—sometimes useful mutations, oftener not.

  Marengo Chabrier understood that few mutations become dominant, that ideas are rarely more than the sums of their parts. He also understood that IEE's chief exec was demanding a useful, dominant mutation tailored to fit. More worrisome still, Chabrier understood that short-term success, measured in these terms, was damned unlikely. It was a remnant of intellectual honesty that made him use the term 'gestation', for it promised nothing beyond recapitulation.

  Most worrisome of all, Chabrier knew that Mills was very unlikely to let a lab full of addicts flush various expensive shits through their systems forever.

  One way or another, the synthesizer scale-up program would be terminated someday and, like as not, Mills would reveal it with a handful of permanent personnel terminations. Slow poisons in the drugs? That was why Chabrier had them chemically analyzed before he dispensed them to his lab staff. He would, in any case, dispense them—though his friendship with Sun and Ming would make that act painful. But Chabrier himself would then turn to his clean stash, and would either escape or plead for his life.

  He knew he had no hope of crossing the San Rafael desert without help. That was why he hoped to infatuate this great sow, Eve Simpson. And if sexual bonds alone were tenuous, he might further ensure her help by making her party to a deception that would drive a wedge between the woman and Boren Mills. C'est le premier pas qui coute, he knew; that first step which required so much resolve. But Chabrier had taken that step two months before, and Eve had cavorted like a Disney hippo at the idea. It had been her own idea, in fact, to disguise the thing as an outsized amulet—for she owned a jewel large enough, unique enough, to account for its size and whatever security precautions she might arrange.

  As Chabrier was bemoaning his most recent failures to scale up the Chinese synthesizer, Eve cut in. "Well then, how about our little scale down?" Her face was alight with mischief.

  He paused, switching mental tracks. "It functions," he said.

  "Omigod, does it? I mean—what won't it make? How much at a time? What do I feed it? Any batteries to change? Give, goddammit!"

  His last shred of suspicion—that she was baiting him on behalf of Mills—evaporated with her outburst. He winked, walked to his safe, spent his own good time opening it, and withdrew a folded kerchief. With a flourish, he shook something from its folds, dangled it from a chain of brushed stainless steel. Eve's mouth was a small 'o' as she tracked its pendulum swing.

  "It looks naked," she said. "Can you put the Ember in the thingummy now?"

  "The bezel? Yes, if you have it with you."

  She ripped open her bag, tore its inner lining, and pulled out a tiny velour bag. The Ember of Venus slid into her palm; and now it was Chabrier's turn to gawk.

  The automated Venus sampler craft had found no true life on Venus. Mineral and gas samples, scooped up for physical return to Earth orbit, had mostly confirmed earlier data. The surface temperature of the shrouded planet was, after all, nearly five hundred degrees Celsius.

  But one mineral specimen, taken from an arroyo at the lip of Venus's Ishtar highlands, became wedged at one side of the container which was to maintain Venus-normal temperature during the long voyage back. The specimen gradually cooled in space and was quickly discovered by the sampler recovery team. The exact mechanism by which a mineral specimen became the Ember of Venus was still argued in learned journals, but its existence was unarguable fact.

  Almost a centimeter thick after slices had been taken from it, the Ember was an ovoid the breadth of a hen's egg. It was under great internal stress. Despite the most careful progress of the diamond saw, one chip had flown from the side of the jewel.

  Otherwise it was perfect, its surface smooth as a soap bubble but with voluptuous prominences on its face. The Ember of Venus compared to an Aussie fire opal as the opal compared to a gallstone. It had been presented to Eve by the CEO of LockLever as inducement for certain favorable media reports i
n 1998, when her body was merely lush and not yet obese. Eve had performed those services while passing sensitive data on to LockLever's competitor, Mills—which assured her position at IEE.

  Thus Eve's possession of the Ember was irregular, but not illegal. She had often thought of wearing it. Now, to decoy attention from the device it covered, it would find employment at Eve's throat.

  "Incroyable," Chabrier whispered. "May I?" He took the stone between thumb and middle finger, intending to check its fit into the bezel he had prepared, but paused again as if thunderstruck. The translucent flickering depth of the gem seemed bottomless; iridescent hues of every color intersected, shifted, moved as if impelled by some viscous liquid.

  Chabrier shook off the urge to snarl, 'mine, mine,' chuckling at himself. He laid the Ember into the bezel of the device in his other hand. Then he smiled at the irony. For the Ember of Venus was only facade for something of far greater value, a device more significant than any jewel: a tiny version of the Chinese synthesizer.

  "Come, we shall imprison your Ember," he said, and she came out of the couch as if scalded by it. Together, for Eve would not let the jewel out of her sight, they moved to his littered desk. He cemented the Ember in place, then arranged the tiny padded metal fingers to clasp its edge while she looked on. Wordlessly he lifted the chain, spread it with both hands, smiled into the eyes of Eve as he hung it around her neck.

  "Let me imprison your ember," she drawled. She was smiling, breathing deeply; and without taking her gaze from his she began to open the beige coverall.

  Presently, after she had consumed his first orgasm, she lifted the amulet and licked that, too, as if by wetting it she could bring out still more lustre. Murmuring: "Now that you've taken advantage of me, you dirty old monkey, tell me how this fucking thing works!"

  Rubber-legged, Chabrier walked with her to the chaise and began to instruct her. Set into small bezels in an oval pattern around the Ember were fifteen opaque black diamonds, cabochon cut, surely the zenith of understatement since they functioned as studs for the tiny integral computer terminal.

  At the top and bottom of the bezel were globes of brushed stainless, the size of a child's marble. A grid in the upper globe was the air intake; the synthesizer did not create mass, but converted it—in this case, from nitrogen. The lower globe was the yield chamber, and a hidden detent allowed it to split apart. Isotope powered, the minuscule device had a yield measured in grams per hour.

  Eve's amulet could not synthesize living tissue, of course, nor materials requiring great heat and pressure, e.g., diamonds. But using her access code to CenCom, Eve could request the chemical composition of many substances; punch the memory stud to place CenCom's response in the memory circuits; and then request a sample of that substance in the yield chamber. Chabrier had arbitrarily placed a one-gram maximum on a given yield as a safety precaution.

  The readout display was hidden; Chabrier had put it inside the false back of the amulet, fearing that an overt display might reveal too much to any admirer of the Ember.

  "So I memorize the functions of the diamond studs," she repeated, "and use the first thirteen for alphanumerics with the 'change function' stud." She saw his nod, then made a pouty-mouth: "But it won't make a kittycat?"

  He laughed outright. "Mais non, it can only give you inanimate joys." He saw her puzzlement. "Gold dust, tetrahydrocannabinol…"

  She turned it over, weighed it in her hand. Very quietly: "I don't think I'll use it for anything more than a toy."

  "I should be very dismayed if you did. I hope you will not be tempted by the urge to create—substances that could endanger you." His expression was serious, the long lashes low on his cheeks. Her wilfullness was a calculated risk which he must take, for if she died he would have no confederates.

  "You're sweet, Marengo," she said. "What say we create a gram of harmless THC."

  "Please do—and always flush the yield chamber carefully," he warned. "You must not ask for poisonous or radioactive items. That would not be wise."

  "I'll be wise," she promised. If she had a motto, it was 'promise them anything…'

  Chapter 19

  Seth Howell stalked back and forth on the podium, cracking his big knuckles as he surveyed the rover gathering. "You get the best food, the best training, the best pay you could ask for," he growled. "And I don't have to tell you that if those carrots don't work, Salter could always use the stick." Howell tapped himself behind the ear; let his hard glance ricochet among the impassive rovers. Howell, of course, had no mastoid critic; for him, the finger-tap gesture came easily. "So let's understand each other: there will be no, repeat no, refusal of missions for any reason whatever. Some of you have been walking too near that line."

  Dawna Clinton, easily the tallest of the half-dozen female rovers and the only black in the cadre, uncoiled from her seat. Watching her stance,

  Quantrill thought the woman must sleep at attention. "With respect, Mr. Howell, I'd like to hear you comment on some ques—observations," she amended quickly. Nearby, little Max Pelletier shifted uneasily and looked away as if to find further distance from her. Pelletier and Clinton were an unlikely pair, but deadly little Max was one rover who tended to choose a buddy. At the moment, Quantrill realized, he must be wishing it wasn't Dawna Clinton.

  "This isn't a press interview, Clinton, but go ahead," Howell snapped.

  Voice clear, almost strident with stress: "Since this is a general ass-chew, I gather the rumors are true." She watched something flicker across Howell's face; continued: "Some rover has been turned, and the Indys are going to run an expose on us. Unless we disappear a few folks as a warning."

  "Two out of three ain't bad," Howell cracked. No one smiled. "No comment on the 'turned rover' hypothesis; did you expect one? I'll say this much: we know two leak sources, and we're letting them run loose for now." Howell noted the looks among the rovers, most of them some nonverbal variant of, 'could it be you?' "Sit down, Clinton. By now you've all received your mission files. Some of you will have a pair. No doubt some of you, in spite of orders, have been comparing notes and put two and two together.

  "And got five. It isn't the Indy party we have to stop. It's the rebels who have infiltrated some religious sects, lodge organizations, and yes, some radicals among the Indys. The Independent party itself must always be viewed as the loyal opposition, a necessary part of a two-party system in Streamlined America." Howell's husky tenor had become almost singsong, repeating the public dicta of Blanton Young.

  Kent Ethridge's voice was weary, but cutting: "I learned more poly sci from you, Howell, than from every prof in Iowa State. Are you telling us now, in spite of what you used to teach in T Section, that a gaggle of hits against a loose confederation of rebels is going to stop the expose? Not escalate the trouble?"

  "I know you have your orders." Something in the set of the heavy shoulders spelled embarrassment to Quantrill, who could not recall ever seeing the big man register that particular emotion before. But Howell had his orders, too…

  "And if it escalates," Ethridge went on, voice as dead, as inexorable, as the collapse of an ancient mausoleum, "won't a rover be a millstone around the government's neck? And what, I wonder, happens to us in that case?"

  Hissing it: "You have your fuckin orders." Howell passed a hand over the top of his head, took a breath, tried another tack. "The rebs are no longer a loose confederation, Ethridge. They've bypassed the pure guerrilla stage and are organized well enough for us to pinpoint some nerve centers. That's as well-kept a secret as any you'll hear. You sure won't hear it on the media," he snorted.

  "Except the outlaw media." Quantrill spoke against his own better judgment. It had occurred to him that Eve Simpson might be a rebel in IEE clothing.

  "We know who they are, too," said Howell. "We can jam some transmissions, and the rest is chiefly around the borders where it doesn't upset people in the heartlands where the strength of Streamlined America lies." He caught himself, aware that he was parr
oting obvious propaganda. "But whatever happens, don't worry that you'd be thrown away. I've seen contingency plans and, believe me, you'd be needed. Believe me," he said again, as though repetition generated its own truth.

  Clinton again: "So, in a way, we're cleansing the Indy party of a few infiltrators and using the, ah, soap to warn the Indys against exposing S & R."

  "Couldn't put it better myself," Howell nodded. "By now you've realized that things're heating up before the senatorial elections. If your missions don't send the rebels back into their holes, there could be open violence this fall. And wouldn't Canada and Mexico just love that?"

  Quantrill sat preoccupied as Howell dismissed them, wondering at the surge of patriotism he had felt. No, Mexico and Canada weren't the enemy. They'd already bitten off as much of Streamlined America as they could chew—and Canada seemed genuinely ready to return border territories as soon as Streamlined America was capable of meeting their needs.

  But there might be thirty million Americans who would love to see the Young administration overturned. You couldn't disappear them all. Were they the enemy?

  Then the young rover glanced around; caught the hopelessness mirrored in the face of Marbrye Sanger; and again he felt the adrenal surge coursing down his spine. It heralded a sense of purpose he had thought lost forever, and identified the enemy of everything Ted Quantrill represented.

  And from that moment on, Ted Quantrill was the enemy.

  Chapter 20