End Time

by G. A. Matiasz

  “Honey, I’m home,” Marcus said in the direction of the kitchenette, “Well Neal, I take it you remember these cottages from our bachelor days. Caught a two foot bass at Nicasio as I remember.”

  Neal barely nodded. He was clearly agitated.

  “Any breakthroughs?”

  “A couple of very promising leads.” Marcus removed his jacket and hung it in the closet. “But we haven’t caught Peregrine yet, or found the riemanium.”

  “Mark, the FBI is on my back. They’re threatening an investigation.” Neal clenched his hands.

  “Don’t tell me,” Mark said, “A guy named Edward Sumner.”

  “You know about him?” Neal’s worried eyes widened.

  “Our friend, Brian Sampson, warned me about him. Said he was bad news.”

  Marcus stepped momentarily into the kitchenette to give Gwen a peck and appropriate two glasses as well as the bottle of wine with which she had been flavoring their dinner.

  “Wine?” the detective offered, “I don’t drink anything stronger these days.”

  “Thanks,” Neal accepted the full glass of rosé, “I was hoping you’d come up with something to get this guy out of my hair.”

  “Skeletons in the closet, Neal?” Marcus poured himself half a glass.

  “My personal life, no. It’s business I’m worried about, but not on this shipment,” Neal was not in a sipping mood, and his glass was soon empty, “Not in the last twenty years either. But when Security Pacific was a struggling business, well, I can’t claim the same. I don’t think Sumner is going to limit himself or the Bureau to the last two decades.”

  “Better start your damage control,” Marcus suggested, refilling the corporate president’s glass.

  “Already have. But the best damage control would be a quick resolution to this theft. Then I could easily convince friends in Washington to quash this investigation.”

  “I have a feeling that this case is not going to be solved quickly,” Mark said, and seeing the flash of sheer panic on Neal’s face, continued, “But with any luck it’ll be resolved sooner rather than later. I already have everything the police have found out, thanks to Sampson, who is also arranging some local help for me. And, I’ve started interviewing the principals. By the way, I’ll need a 1200 dpi color multimedia scanner and a gestalt pattern-matching computer program to help with some of the research I’ll be doing.”

  “It’s yours,” Neal gestured for a third glass, “By the way, what do you know about my former scheduler?”

  “Rosanne Casey? Talked to her today. Nice girl.”

  “I found out she’s the one who tipped off the media too. Cost me a bit, but the TV reporter revealed his source. Mark, she’s involved in this in some way.”

  “I tend to doubt it,” Mark sipped his wine, “She still can’t accept that her boyfriend was involved in the theft. She’s just confused, and maybe a bit naive.”

  “I don’t know about that. I could see her accidentally revealing the shipment to her lover or the riemanium to the media, but slipping up on both...its too coincidental for me.”

  “What did the reporter say?”

  “He said he’d tricked her out of it, but I just can’t accept two such mistakes. The odds don’t cut it with me.”

  “I tend to believe that reporter,” the detective said, “Peregrine’s shaping up to be a true professional. I tend to think he just used Rosanne to get access to your building. In any case, I hope you haven’t gone and done anything, urn, stupid. Like when you fired her.”

  “I’ve taken what action I thought appropriate,” Neal straightened in his chair, his umbrage unfurled by the alcohol.

  “As your friend, not to mention the detective you’ve hired to crack this case,” Marcus put down his glass, still a finger full of wine, and decided for honesty, “I’m getting annoyed with this vengeful side to you, Neal. It’s knee-jerk. You have tremendous power. You’re injured, upset by the theft and embarrassed by what Rosanne’s done. Granted. But you ignore the evidence that her actions weren’t intentional and you lash out, not once but twice, to squash what’s accidentally hurt you by crushing someone as powerless as Rosanne. You’re not thinking, Neal. And your mindless actions are making my job a hell of a lot more difficult. It’s as if you’re working against me solving this case.”

  “Sorry,” his old friend slumped back into the chair, deflated by the detective’s sharp, accurate words. “This whole thing has me overwrought. I haven’t been sleeping well. Or thinking too clearly.”

  “So, what did you do to Rosanne this time?”

  “Wrote a letter to the UCSF Chancellor,” Neal was sheepish now, “I’m sure nothing will come of it. After all, she hasn’t been accused of any crime by the police.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Marcus shook his head.

  Security Pacific’s president excused himself soon thereafter, leaving Marcus and Gwen to a tasty spaghetti dinner, complete with tossed vinaigrette salad and garlic bread.

  “Overwrought is not the word,” Gwen commented, following a mouthful with a sip of wine, “Neal’s likely his own worst enemy in this situation. You might want to suggest that he leave town for a little while, to cool down.”

  “He can’t,” Mark smiled ruefully, “Not with Sumner on his ass. But with any luck, we can wrap this up in a couple of weeks, and save Neal’s butt. Still, I can’t get over how petty Neal’s being with Rosanne.”

  “Will closing this case derail the FBI investigation?”

  “Neal has more than his share of high-placed influence. He wasn’t lying about his friends in Washington.” Mark helped himself to more meatballs and sauce, “Excellent meatballs. Anyway, if I nail Peregrine, and Neal gets the riemanium back, he’ll be telling Edward to take a flying leap. Gwen, would you mind it if we talked about work over dinner?”

  “I thought that was what we were doing,” she teased.

  “I mean, your work,” Mark chuckled, “I have the police file to date and it is extensive. Also, Captain Sampson promised regular updates. I have some evidence that Peregrine might be involved in ultra-radical antiwar activities. The scanner Neal’s getting is to try and match the police sketch with characters in whatever local anti-war footage I can round up. We need to find out who this Peregrine really is. That means you’ll have to access our regular, alternative data bases. Interpol, the Fortune 500 Blacklist, Credit Nexus, Celebes Data Board...”

  “Black Talon,” Gwen shuddered.

  “Yes. Black Talon included,” Mark said.

  The sophisticated followers of neo-Satanist Anton LeVey had been able to compile THE most comprehensive extralegal database around. The Black Talon Board was so thorough, so accurate and so up-to-date that Marcus, as a private investigator, often wondered how they managed to collect and update it.

  “Anything else?” Gwen asked.

  “No.” Mark poised his fork over his last cache of meatballs, “I need a list of every rental in Alabaster, but 111 get that from real estate offices in town. There’ll be no substitute for door-to-door on this case.”

  They finished their meal, savoring moments of silence as much as the food’s rich flavors. Mark collected and washed the dishes. Then he called Joe Manley.

  “Sure, I’ll help,” Joe’s voice boomed, “Might even get it approved by my Supervisor.”

  “Did Brian fill you in?” Marcus asked.

  “Sure did. Our station got a copy of the sketch on that suspect. If you want, I’ll take a copy of it to those Alabaster area nightclubs.”

  “Deal. How about a meeting?”

  “I can drop by today, after work. Around 3 this afternoon.”

  “That’ll be fine.”

  SEVENTEEN

  BBC World Service Special Report

  “Modern Counterinsurgency: The Weapons of War”

  BBC Reporter: Nijal Thomas [1-13-2007]

  (Electrostraca #: RNB/GM-113007-375-789-0376)

  The dark side to the U.S. counterinsurgency campaign in souther
n Mexico raises an unseemly interest in a zoology of weapons and war-fare, both natural and artificial. The preferred assassin doing US/Mexican counterinsurgency work in the Yucatan, for instance, is not human, and not even alive. Rather, it is the Subucu Spider. Take a ZLF terrorist into custody for interrogation. Make sure to get a skin sample for genetic fingerprinting before releasing the known guerrilla. Then, use the Subucu.

  The Spider is a Japanese manufacture on a CIA commission; a body the size of a child’s fist crafted of plasteel and superb silicon/carbon/photon microelectronics, and eight expertly micro engineered prehensile tensor legs. Feed in the required DNA fingerprint, then let the spider loose in the countryside, in a village, town or city. During the day, a Subucu tucks into a nondescript, soil colored lump in a sunny, obscure spot to recharge its photovoltaics in order to supplement its radiation decay energy cells. During the night it uses the cover of darkness, fuzzy mapping, sensopic antennae, and infrared cluster-eyes to locate sleeping humans. It extrudes an extra fine needle, sheathed in local anesthetic, and inserts it into the slumbering flesh to take a DNA sample. No match, the spider scuttles on. A match, and the Subucu injects either shellfish toxin or a highly concentrated arachnid poison. Simple, and deadly.

  The spiders are methodical. They can be coordinated with other spiders to cover a wider area. They can be homing invested. They are non-emotional, self-recycling, reusable 21st century assassins. And they are one of a growing phylum of robotic arthropods, used primarily in military capacities. Subucu also offers the Subucu Scarab, a large dung beetle outfitted principally for photoelectronic spying. Benderz of Germany offers a spy-mantis and a plastique warheaded cockroach smart microbomb. The US based Singer Syndicate rounds out this arachnid/insect schema with a multi-use land crab; a robot crustacean with interchangeable intelligence gathering, explosives carrying, and poison delivering modules.

  Through recombinant DNA, bioengineering and advanced biological sciences, the U.S. military has attempted to turn even the natural world against the ZLF insurgents and their supporters. Sterilized, genetically modified super caribe fingerlings are regularly released in schools along the Usumacinta, Candelaria, Grijalva and other rivers in guerrilla liberated territory. They eat their way upstream in their brief six month, bioengineered life cycles; through fish, birds, river creatures and drinking animals as well as playing children, women washing clothes, farmers irrigating crops, fishermen catching food, and guerrillas wading water.

  Most bees and wasps are solitary insects, the exceptions being social honeybees and hornets. With invariably social ants, they form the order Hymenoptera, and all share a genetic trigger of primeval origin called “defense swarming.” A complex pheromone trips this reaction which, in the hive-oriented, amounts to frenzied nest protection and reinforcement. In solitary bees and wasps the mechanism is regressive, but the reaction is profound.

  Bechtel manufactures a synthetic pheromone which can be dusted over hundreds of square miles of Yucatan forest in spring bloom by cruise missile or helicopter gun ship. The solitary bees and wasps start chasing each other in buzzing lines. Lines loop, and humming loops accrete into thrumming whirlwinds. These angry, stinging insect storms attack anything in their paths, slaughtering animals and people indiscriminately as they zigzag through jungle as visible, killing thunder. Finally, they break up from exhaustion and die by the thousands. Dow Chemical recently completed the research on a similar process to trigger hummingbirds into scream winged, needle billed, killing swarms. And plans exist to study inducing close-to-shore shark feeding frenzies.

  Bombers selectively spray millions of gene designed caterpillar larvae across the rain forests in lieu of more toxic herbicides. The voracious creatures eat through vast swaths of jungle and farmland as they expand out from their drop sites, each growing to the length of an adult hand before metamorphosis sets in. Wide gray curtains of pupae then hang in the forest’s gloom, colony shrouds fed on immense deforestation. When these papillion de la meurte split open their cocoons, they are asexual red and orange butterflies that live only three months more.

  The guerrilla forces, as well as the civilians in the self proclaimed Mixtecan and Mayapan Liberated Territories, as yet are unable to counter these sometimes gruesome, planned epidemics of natural and artificial pestilence.

  EIGHTEEN

  Peregrine quietly and expertly disarmed the alarm, then eased open a window with a craft set of tools. He’d gone to this bar infrequently, and only because it was close to his apartment. A gaggle of local old time regulars had made it conservative and uncomfortable, nothing more than a place to go when every other place was closed or too far away. He felt no qualms about burglarizing it.

  The safe beneath the bar was old, so the tumblers fairly shouted falling into place. He didn’t need an augment to crack it and collect the $540 in cash. He left the change and the revolver. He’d never owned a gun, let alone carried one on a job. Quietly, Peregrine disappeared into the night before dawn.

  ***

  Greg assumed that sleeping with someone else would somehow, magically take his mind off Janet. It did not. She had been his best friend while in Alabaster. Her betrayal still cut him like a knife. He wanted to get the word of his sexing Margaret back to her, to provoke what he could, hopefully some jealousy. They had talked, swum, studied, seen movies, gone to concerts, fixed each other’s cars, and done most everything else together for the past five years. He felt her absence in his life as a deep hole cut into his heart. Margaret had no way of filling it for now. No one could.

  He walked down to Remley Plaza after his first class in Intermediate Statistics, gathering clouds of dark emotion about him. Monday/Wednesday/Friday were Greg’s short days, just two classes. Typically, the beginning of a semester figured as MallTime, with students shopping for classes down to the administrative wire. Two large ravens, Hugin and Munin, seemed to touch wings in their flight above and across his path, tossing their shadows briefly onto him.

  The plaza was the largest gathering area on the campus. It was pentagon-shaped, with a now quiescent fountain off center. The low redwood student center and student coop enterprises occupied one side. The central library’s reinforced concrete arcologies commanded another, flanked to one side by the sci-fi stacked waffle architectures of the Physics and Mathematics Building—part of the Science and Engineering Complex—and on the other side by the fluted Humanities/Social Science Complex spires. The brittle, concrete Administration fortress walled off the pentacle on its fifth side, part of a cluster that included the Student Union building. Garish, “arty” sculptures accented this star-shaped pattern. ASU’s three cluster colleges—Warhol (art and music), Cookes (premed), and Merrick (vocational high-tech)—were scattered on the southern and eastern peripheries. ASU was a commuter campus, with over half of its students traveling to attend from outside Alabaster proper. Greg, a third year student, no longer noticed the details of his school.

  In addition, he was engrossed in his own misery. So engrossed that he was virtually in the midst of the MDRG smoke-in before the pungent smell of burning marijuana brought him out of his own cloud. He looked up surrounded by people smoking dope. Smoke and two other MDRG lads tossed joints into the crowd, perhaps five hundred strong, like farmers seeding an alfalfa field. Someone handed Greg a joint and he accepted it. The fragrant cloud of combined smoke drifted off toward the library.

  “Greg,” the familiar voice piped up behind him. He turned to find Margaret, books in hand, smiling at him. Damn, Greg wanted to remember where he had originally seen her. Certainly before Larry’s party. Instead, he smiled back.

  “Care for a hit?” he offered her his smoldering joint.

  “I try not to smoke during the day,” she waved it off, “Do you know the people who put this on?”

  “Smoke? The MDRG? Sure.” Greg said and watched her eyes widen a bit. “Urn, how about a movie tonight?”

  “Will your dad be home?” she wiggled closer.

  “No, he
won’t be home until Wednesday.”

  “Then why don’t we just go to your house.” Now very close, she looked up at him coyly, her lips pressed together. “Stay home tonight. And fuck.”

  She brushed her hand along his crotch and giggled. When the bone gets hard, the brain gets soft.

  “Sounds great to me,” he grinned, blushing with her boldness.

  “Pick me up around seven,” she said and turned, “Got to go to class.”

  “I see you’re making up for lost time,” Larry stood at his elbow.

  “Just a diversion,” Greg said, watching Margaret sashay off.

  “Nice diversion,” Larry laughed, “Quite EM. By the way, I’ve sent out certain, shall we say, probes to certain ASP folks, about you-know-what. There’s interest. A meeting’s been suggested, tomorrow, around two. Place to be told me.”

  “I’m still not 100% sure about this,” Greg frowned, remembering his words from the night before and nervously raking his hand through his hair. “I mean, I like the idea. In principle. But I can see it easily getting out of hand.”

  “True,” Larry hit off a joint and gave it to Greg. “I was thinking we go in with the position that the, um, item remain hidden, known only to you. What we’re going to ASP for is their political savvy in setting this up. We want to pose a credible threat, so we need to project a credible image. That’s what we’re asking ASPs help on.”

  “And if I don’t agree with the way ASP wants to handle things?” Greg asked.

  “Then, its off. Clearly.” Larry said with finality, “You have the last word. If you’re not comfortable with it, it doesn’t go down.”

  “One more thing,” Greg grasped for his idea, “Can we distance ourselves a little more? I don’t know. Say we don’t have it directly, but that we know who does?”

  “Tricky,” Larry stroked his beard, then glanced about, lowering his voice, “They’re still looking for that guy, Peregrine. Maybe we can say he has it and is actually a politico, and he wants to use it to its best political advantage.”