by Lee Bond
“Yes, Uncle.” Naoko whispered quietly. It was hard seeing the man after nearly twenty years of conspicuous absence, even moreso as OverCommander. Garth echoed his agreement, albeit with less acquiescence.
“Excellent. Then, as he and I are old acquaintances from long ago, Sa Nickels and I shall speak first.” He smiled wintrily at Garth’s obvious discomfort, reveling in the man’s ignorance at what was to come. He still hadn’t decided what to do with the knowledge he’d gained and suspected he wouldn’t until the very moment of revelation arrived.
On her way, the girl stole the remainder of the onion rings. Making herself comfortable on one of the couches at the other end of the room, she proceeded to eat and work on her proteus.
Garth chuckled at Naoko’s preemptive strike before leaning back in his chair. He gestured for the OverCommander to start, very apprehensive indeed. After his previous dealings with Latelians, he knew ‘Uncle Vasily’ had more than a few aces up his sleeve. He grimaced mentally, wondering what he’d missed this time.
Vasily angled his chair so he could confront Garth more directly. He’d decided to start slowly, playing to Garth’s perception of the facts. “Why didn’t you assist with the terrorists? Your knowledge of Trinity weapons and tactics could have easily brought the day to an end much quicker, and with far less loss of life.”
Garth quirked an eyebrow at the direction Vasily was taking. “Not too long ago, Chairwoman Doans threatened me, sa. Warned me that if I were ever in a place where something crazy happened again, I’d be in a lot of trouble. It was bad enough I was in The Museum. If something had gone wrong … uh, if something had gone wronger with me in the mix? Are you in… ah, yeah. No. Not likely.”
Vasily lobbied, “She called and asked for your assistance.” In fact, though she’d die rather than admit it, Alyssa had come as close to begging as she ever did.
“That she did, that she did.” Garth nodded, his eyes on Naoko. “But … there was nothing I could do. If I left her side, something could’ve happened to her.”
“You are asking me to believe that you had nothing to do with Harry Bosch, the terrorists or …” He almost mentioned the second group of slaughtered ‘terrorists’ but managed to bite the words, “anything else? Why were you at The Museum, today, of all days?”
Naoko made to speak from the couch, but Garth gestured that he had it under control. She sullenly went back to her prote.
“It’s like this, sa. When Si Kamagana here discovered I was going to be fighting in the regular Game against all your cybernetic crazies, she decided to help me. I guess I made an impression on her that one time we met in the spaceport. I can be quite charming when I’m not busy being an asshole. She took me to The Museum today so I could get a clearer understanding of the Game, you know, from a racial heritage kind of perspective, seeing as how I’m Latelian now and all. We were in the Tomb … heh… The Hall of Warriors when some guy came up and escorted us into the Viewing Room, and that was that. The rest of it you know.”
“And did you learn anything about your new heritage?” Vasily demanded skeptically. “And what did you think of The Box?”
Garth shrugged. “Learned a lot, I suppose. I learned that the dude who did most of the murals in based his artwork almost entirely on ancient religious designs. Bet you didn’t know that.” Garth shrugged at the shocked look Vasily’s face. “I ain’t lying, sa. You should check into that. And The Box was pretty interesting, for a fake.”
Naoko –who knew that Vasily knew she was blatantly eavesdropping- shouted Garth’s name in absolute, shocked horror. She looked nervously at her Uncle, fully expecting him to draw his sidearm and shoot Garth in the head.
Instead, she saw resigned acceptance. She plucked worriedly at her lower lip.
“You are, of course, correct.” Vasily admitted readily, aghast at how easy it was to be honest with the foreigner-turned-citizen that was Garth Nickels. Naturally, his long-term standing in SpecSer made it easier to know the man wouldn’t dash around blurting state secrets, but only just; tangible proof or not, following his maniacal escapades immediately after landing on Hospitalis, Vasily didn’t trust Garth much.
He resumed when the silence grew awkward. “The ones on display have always been and always will be replicas. The real Box is far too precious an artifact to ship back and forth from planet to planet. Rebellious political terrorists like those we saw today or simple greedy collectors spare no cost to steal it or efforts to destroy it. Occasionally, thieves or demolishers are successful. Since we outfit our ... simulacra with tracking equipment and cameras, it is easy to find and deal very harshly indeed with the culprits. I presume your … your claim of previous interaction with The Box is what led you to this discovery?”
Vasily squinted as soon as Garth dipped his head; the man was being too forthright. He noticed that Naoko showed no shock in learning -even in a sideways manner- about Garth’s intimate knowledge of their ancient prize, and that Garth himself was utterly ignorant of that lack of surprise. She was so very much like her mother, and worriedly, more like her father than was healthy for anybody.
He cleared his throat and spoke loudly so Naoko would benefit, “Anyone learning this is irrevocably bound by Systemic Security Laws. If you or anyone you know suddenly comes forward with an announcement concerning The Box and its alleged fabrication, well … I’m sure you can figure out what would come next.”
“All Hail Latelyspace.” Garth chanted bitterly. Vasily’s candor wasn’t lulling him into any sense of false hope. The man was still the OverCommander and there was still some shit coming down he wasn’t going to like. What did he know? It didn’t matter if the OverCommander could prove his suspicions. Just having them was enough for someone like Vasily. Hell, the man already knew he was guilty of being intimately involved with the destruction of the Spaceport.
Vasily smiled briefly, though not at Garth’s chant; he’d come to a decision concerning the various aspects of Garth Nickels’ disparate, non-Museum related crimes. For the time being, the secret of Harry Bosch would remain a secret: it was too precious a commodity to squander so quickly. “Just so. Now. Since you have proven to my … well, satisfaction isn’t quite the right word … that you weren’t in any way involved with the terrorist organization or the attack on The Museum, allow me to switch to a different topic.” He indicated Garth’s hideously malformed and obviously non-functional prote. “That is an … interesting piece of … prote, sa. Where did you purchase it?”
“I found it.” Garth countered evasively.
“Would you, by chance, have ‘found’ this hideous prote in the Guillfoyle Building?” Vasily wondered with a sly to his voice.
Naoko suddenly became a perfect statue labeled ‘Woman Not Listening At All’.
Vasily fumed. Garth Nickels. He’d obviously shown off to his new girlfriend, a young slip of a thing with a mind as devious as the Chairwoman’s, adding yet another crime to the infinite roster of wrongdoings perpetrated.
“Mmmmaybe.” Garth drawled, hand covering Odin protectively. Destroyed as it was, Odin was nevertheless still an illegal and impossible piece of machinery.
Vasily shifted to a more comfortable position, enjoying himself immensely. He wondered if this was how Alyssa felt when she’d had Ashok on the ropes. “The interesting thing about protean creation units, sa, and I am sure you will appreciate this as you are from Trinity, is the … volatile nature of the machines themselves, and the manner in which they create proteii. Outside of military equipment and materiel, they are undoubtedly the most closely watched and monitored pieces of hardware in the entire system.”
Garth wrinkled his forehead. He was not liking the smug look on Vasily’s face, not at all. He’d missed something. His heart sank. “Sa?”
“Just so. As I was saying, volatile. Owing to the volatile nature of a PCU, as soon as one of the finicky machines registers the smallest disruption of service, authorized service technicians move quickly to the scene. When I say small
est, sa, believe me when I use that word. They are dispatched when static hiccups on the screens. Once on the scene, they diagnose, repair and/or replace a faulty machine. These technicians have permission to enter any facility -including restricted military areas- to examine any PCU issuing an alert status. They adhere to no security protocols in place, again, because of the possible dangers inherent in a faulty machine. Why, I am led to believe that if a PCU goes ‘critical’ we could potentially be looking at devastation that makes either the Spaceport or The Museum look … positively insignificant. Still with me, sa?”
Garth swallowed. He’d seen no sign of these alleged technicians creeping around the place. Moreover, Lieutenant Gregroy wouldn’t have made mention of anyone visiting for a litany of reasons, starting and ending with him being a complete asshole to a guy just doing his job. “Yes.”
“Wonderful. From the very first moment we met, you struck me as a man who is capable of paying very close attention when the situation warrants. As I said, these men go where they wish, when they wish, especially when their bloody dangerous machines start malfunctioning. And, as you say, you ‘found’ this … this machine,” Vasily pointed to the ‘prote’ disdainfully, “in the Guillfoyle Building.”
Garth, unsure how much further his own actions could condemn him, didn’t trust himself to say anything, so he ate some cold French fries.
Vasily pursued his quarry relentlessly. “I have it on good authority that, in addition to several protean creation units suddenly and violently exploding without destroying a minimum of three square miles per unit, a single PCU remains. The remarkable thing about the sole remaining PCU is that it is in such … and I quote from memory,” he tapped his burned and proteless arm, “’magnificent disarray’ that Protean Technicians are likely to be examining the, huhm, modifications for decades. This is interesting both to myself and to the Chairwoman, and for obvious reasons. Do you know what those reasons are, sa?”
“Um, no?” Garth looked sideways to Naoko. She was willing herself invisible. A few more minutes and she’d vanish altogether.
“I did not think you did.” Vasily smiled easily, shifting once again. He yearned for some more onion rings, but didn’t want to break off. “We are interested because of ownership laws. Ownership laws dictate that the owner of a facility where protean creation units are stored are directly and financially responsible for the care of those units, regardless of whether he or she is responsible for any theoretical damages or failures. Now, Protean Technicians are no fools. They understand and even admit –quietly- that things go wrong from time to time, and so, under normal circumstances, the penalties are simply hefty fees. Why, even the God Army has had to pay them. However, and I hope you figured this out, the … situation? Yes, the situation in the Guillfoyle Building is far from ordinary.”
Garth felt the blood flow from his body into some ephemeral dimension. Holy fuck was he in trouble.
“Now, because people are sometimes fools and sometimes fools act foolishly, penalties exist for the both the intentional destruction of and illegal use of a protean creation unit. Most of the time, this includes a stay at The Peak. I’ve heard it said a day in The Peak is like a year in regular prison and judging from the extreme tampering done to the sole remaining PCU in the Guillfoyle Building, a life sentence is the least the fool, or fools, could expect.“
Vasily let that sink in for a moment before continuing. Garth was pale as a sheet and Naoko was so stridently looking out the window he could’ve pulled his sidearm and fired it into the ceiling without her noticing.
After a half minute of terrible silence, he resumed. “As you are a singularly intelligent man with a wide and storied history in Trinityspace, I feel comfortable in saying you’ve probably come across methods similar to those by which we create our protes. When I say similar, I imply only that the science bears certain hallmarks of congruence. The main difference being ours does not consume whole planets by accident. Obviously, then, to someone with such experience, wisdom and intelligence, outlining the reasons for the prohibitively high fines and Peak-time as they pertain to faulty, destroyed or tampered with PCU machines is unnecessary. I don’t need to waste my time with that, do I?
“Uh, no, OverCommander.” He didn’t want to go to The Peak. The Peak was not on his bucket list. Caught like a whale on a hook, sure as shit. If he hadn’t gone gung-ho on the fact that Latelians had mastered nanotechnology he would’ve probably realized that they monitored that shit with intense scrutiny. But no, he’d not only gone ahead and destroyed an ass-ton of the delicate machines, he’d stripped one down and rebuilt it in ways that had probably been considered absolutely impossible. He closed his eyes. He was an idiot.
“Obviously, you will be fined. Heftily. It is the nature of the beast. Were it not for … past acts of contrition … it is a certifiable guarantee that you’d be spending the rest of your life in The Peak, guilt at modifying the PCU or not. As it stands,” Vasily caught and held Garth’s eyes, “we have no verifiable method to prove that you are the one responsible for the tampering. We know that you, for whatever unthinkable reason, did destroy several of the machines. That is not in doubt. Sadly, the previous owner of the Guillfoyle Building is already in The Peak for Crimes against Latelyspace and is thus free from further condemnation. What more can we do to him? Besides, as I hope you understand from my implications, ownership laws apply to current ownership. You own the building; therefore, you were responsible for contacting the appropriate authorities concerning the vastly modified PCU. You did not; therefore, you are the one who will be … punished. As you have become something of a … unique commodity … here in Latelyspace, I imagine that the Chairwoman would prefer instead to simply punish you in a wildly improbable but entirely Peak-less manner. Some would call that eminently preferable, yes?”
Garth swallowed again. His mouth was very, very dry. “Oh, yeah. No, totally.” he said hoarsely. “The Peak is … bad.”
“Yes.” Vasily nodded. “I’m confident, knowing the Chairwoman as I do, that if you were to … donate … the Guillfoyle Building and everything inside to the Latelian Regime, and if you were to swear to uphold any secrets you may’ve come across during your visits, you will find your time being spent in the company of a certain young woman instead of ... hmmm ... shall we say 'excessively aggressive' Peak personnel. Naturally, donations made to the Latelian Regime will not displace any … fines.”
“Naturally.” A hot volcano burned through Garth, starting in his feet and blowtorching its way right up to his head and out his left ear. The world spun on its axis for a while as he tried to think of a way out of the mess he’d gotten himself into, but –much like every time he tried to outthink himself- he failed. Hospitalis made him act like a wonky gomer. And after Lisa’s admonitions about thinking more clearly, too!
Hot on that sorrowful twinge of regret, he realized something that lessened the hammer-blow of his foolishness. If he'd made different choices, he would have had to try to protect The Museum hostages as himself –a feat netting him who-knew-what kind of punishments from the Chairwoman- or he would’ve had to close his eyes and let them all die. Still, though. The Guillfoyle Building was to’ve been his base of operations and now he was going to have to work triple time to buy or build another one, and even harder still to keep the whole thing a secret from prying eyes.
With much resignation, Garth repeated himself. “Naturally.”
Vasily realized he was subconsciously tapping his bare prote-arm and stopped. Proteless. It’d been more than fifty years since his arm had been naked for any length of time and he was completely out of sorts. Not, he reflected wryly, as much as Garth Nickels was. His current mood, darkened anger doubled up with a massive helping of regret, had to be a difficult meal to swallow. This was how the ex-SpecSer should’ve felt at the end of the Spaceport debacle. It was refreshing to learn the man was capable of remorse. “That being said, I’d like to share with you my concerns about the modifications done to th
e PCU, sa.”
“Y-yeah?”
“As you are from Trinity, and you have seen, well, all that you have seen, you must have a very crystal clear view of the dangers of scientific advancement when the principles aren’t your own, yes? When you try to improve upon something you yourself didn’t discover?”
Garth ran a hand through his hair. Still reeling from the exorbitant loss of the Guillfoyle Building and whatever mountainous fine he was going to suffer, he was having a rough time following Vasily’s lead. Then he thought about Gorensworld, and the fools who’d lived there. As happened every time he thought about The Cloud and the nightmare that followed, his skin started crawling and he to keep from screaming. Ten years, and the horror hadn’t diminished a bit. He nodded but said nothing; the … thing Marisol had turned into, what they’d all turned into before the system had … transmuted … horrific.
He couldn’t imagine that happening to Latelyspace. To Naoko. He nodded, grimly.
Vasily wanted to know what particular bit of history Garth was thinking on but didn’t -couldn’t- press; it was enough to see that there were things out there that could affect Garth Nickels so overwhelmingly.
Before talking, he turned to Naoko. The poor girl had fallen asleep, arm curled protectively around the onion rings. He smoothed a grin from his face; after her fourth birthday party, she’d done the same thing with her birthday cake. He was glad she was asleep.
What he was about to suggest was something Naoko shouldn’t even have a chance to hear.
Vasily cleared his throat. “Every Protean Technician this side of Latelyspace is going to be involved in a massive retooling of military hardware, sa. Ashok Guillfoyle’s perfidy reached even further and deeper than we at first assumed. Our standing army cannot be without our proteii, nor can we safely use what we are currently equipped with. They were pulled out of your building before they had a chance to do anything but look.