Nanotime

by Bart Kosko

Pierre Rittenhouse stood up and held a black briefcase he had brought in the room with the melon. The stout man in the dark suit fiddled with his blue and black striped tie. That made John think of the taser stuns and the baton welts that hurt deep into his back and ribs. It also made John think of the Swiss army knife in his pants and how much he would like to use it to carve up Rittenhouse’s full stomach.

  “Let’s go,” Rittenhouse said. “You can give me directions in the car.”

  “Where are we?”

  “Gilman Springs.”

  “That’s where we are? It’s an hour outside of L.A.”

  Rittenhouse shrugged and left the room. John followed him out. They had been in a new office suite the whole time.

  They walked to the elevator at the end of the beige hall and passed the offices of a tax lawyer and a pediatrician. John thought they had been in a warehouse or the holding room of a police precinct. They rode the elevator down to the parking level and John thought of the Swiss knife again. Catton had said that Rittenhouse would make him a copy before they left. Now was the time to test whether he had lied.

  “Wait a minute,” John said. “You’re supposed to make me a copy of the conveyance.”

  “We’ll stop at the hotel and use their machine.”

  “You have the original with you?”

  The man nodded and tapped his briefcase.

  John wanted to dig out the raisin and put it in his ear before he made a move. He could do that as they walked to the car but Rittenhouse would see him and might even use that taser to take it from him. He would have to wait.

  The question now was whether to get in the car with Rittenhouse.

  There was no need for the suit to drive him. John could go outside to a pay phone and call Eytan or call a cab. This looked more and more like a trap. They had his witness and his patent and they had lied about the copy and had held him in this office building. The police had stopped him and yet he walked free without ever seeing them. They could lead him to a Tabriz chiphead. Catton and Rittenhouse might even be chipheads.

  John felt the energy come back to him at the very idea of it. Maybe he should follow his heart and kill Rittenhouse before the suit tried to kill him. He could hear Jism telling him not even to think about it and to just stay wary.

  John did not often think of killing people. He had like all teens used bootleg VR programs that let him shoot and choke and gouge the villains in games. A college friend had once let him try a banned program that let him hack apart digitized public figures with a samurai sword. He had to admit it was fun the first time but the sword never felt real in his hands. The grainy 3-D graphics made the virtual world look too much like a game.

  Now he thought how it would feel to bash open the suit’s skull with the butt of the knife and reach in and pull out a chip or a handful of brains.

  The door opened and John followed Rittenhouse into the underground parking lot. It looked like any other lot with cars parked too closely to make more space. Rittenhouse walked straight toward a large blue van.

  John knew he had to act now if he was to do it.

  He could always say that the suit provoked him or that he thought the suit started to act like a chiphead and he was too tired to tell. He could say that and many more things he could figure out later. Rittenhouse had stunned him and coerced his patent away from him and worked for the great state bureaucracy that he and his friends hated above all else and that he knew now he would never escape. He had to thump the man’s temple with the knife butt and at least see what the suit had packed in the black briefcase.

  John felt the knife in his pocket and made a fist around it. Rittenhouse would see the bulge if he looked back at him.

  John pulled the red knife from his pocket and jumped in the air at Rittenhouse and swung the knife in a big overhand arc. The knife butt came down on the back of the man’s neck at the hairline and skidded off. It sure made selling out feel better.

  Rittenhouse grunted but did not fall or drop the briefcase.

  “You little worm,” Rittenhouse said and turned. “Let’s end this right now.”

  He drew a silenced nine-millimeter.

  John dove at him and grabbed him in a headlock and hit the concrete. John tried to block the gun but felt only the burning taser pain again.

  He opened his eyes and saw the Israeli Daniel close the briefcase and lock it.

  Rittenhouse lay next to him on the concrete but was not dead. He still thrashed from the EMP scrambler Daniel had touched to his skull. The agent Raquel started to drag John from behind.

  John turned to look at her. He had just recognized her short black hair when he saw her nod. John did not see Daniel then touch the EMP scrambler to the back of his head.

  John saw only white.

  Chapter 36

  Tel Aviv

  Israel

  Colonel Avi Hurwicz sipped fresh black coffee in the secure booth. The coffee tasted almost sweet as it washed away the honey. He had taken a combat nap on the cot in his office and eaten a Greek candy bar made of sesame seeds and honey.

  Hurwicz had slept for less than a half hour and yet had dreamed in bright color. Most of his dreams were in black and white and he could not recall them even when he awoke. But he could recall this dream. He still saw the green and red feathers of the huge parrot that flew above him in the Negev Desert.

  But why a parrot? Why the green and red feathers?

  Hurwicz did not know if the dream meant something about a threat to him or to Israel. He always looked for a threat in what he could not explain. Maybe he had seen a smaller version of the bird on a nature program about the old rain forests in Brazil. Maybe the dream was just random nonsense. A sleeping brain made its own signals from the day’s old patterns that still swirled in its neural circuits.

  The mind was still a mystery. Neuroscience and the information sciences had made great upward strides all his life. Yet no one could explain why people slept.

  His thoughts were still on the great bird when Prime Minister Sharon came on-line.

  “Colonel. So far you have been right. No one has attacked us. But most of the world thinks we killed Aminzadeh. The problem is I am not so sure we didn’t.”

  Hurwicz nodded and set down his paper cup. He did not like the gruff little Prime Minister or where he was going with this. It was a bad sign that Sharon had not gotten to the point with his first breath.

  Hurwicz did not trust a diplomat who was more of a hawk than he was.

  An old army friend had told Hurwicz that Sharon made jokes about how Hurwicz was soft on opposing the growing calls to end the draft and to shift to an all-volunteer military. Sharon knew Hurwicz believed in the draft as much as he did but the old man had to be tougher.

  Just then he recalled the parrot was from a sign on the Italian ice cream shop he had stopped in last night.

  That relieved a slight tension and convinced him the dream was nonsense after all. And it made him wish he had a fresh cone of the red-wine ice cream. Just the thought of the cool sour ice cream made him feel better. It meant that the dream was not a warning. He was back in control.

  “Of course we will not apologize,” Sharon said.

  “There is no reason why we should. The evidence suggests the Tabriz cult killed Aminzadeh.”

  “Your chip theory? Someone debrained Davis and made a killer robot out of him? You can’t conclude that from a burned computer chip.”

  “Sir. We have the MRI scan of Tabriz.”

  “I think a metallic cranial plate is more likely. I understand they found something like that at the blast site. I also understand this Davis was a man of loose habits and many debts.”

  “That sounds like Shabak speculation,” Hurwicz said.

  Hurwicz did not trust the security agency Shin Bet. He knew Sharon used the ultrasecret agency to spy on his political enemies as well as to spy on Israel’s neighbors Jordan and Lebanon and Egypt and throughout the Mediterranean. Most of the Shin Bet officers he had me
t seemed obsessed with the Shiite threat. So did the elite Nativ officers who guarded Sharon and worked for his office.

  “Perhaps. But I always believe in the lesser miracle. And right now I find the lesser miracle to be a whoring Davis who went astray until I see proof to the contrary. Now tell me. Do you still think the Azeris won’t attack? They’ve lost a president since your last prediction.”

  “Yes. I still don’t think they will. Their Parliament seems stable and martial law seems to be working despite the riots and sniper fire the press has played up. The fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh also seems to have slowed somewhat.”

  “I am afraid I don’t agree with you. My sources tell me that a coup remains likely in Azerbaijan. They also tell me that Hezbollah and the other Shiite groups that love us so much plan to avenge Aminzadeh.”

  “I hear the same rumors,” Hurwicz said.

  He picked up the cup again and sipped the cooling coffee. The honey taste was gone and the coffee had returned to its old bitterness.

  “Colonel. I won’t gamble the fate of the nation on what you choose to dismiss as rumors.”

  “Sir. I agree that the extremists will take some act of revenge. But it will be on a much smaller scale than a military strike against Israel. No doubt Shin Bet will find some trace of it.”

  “So we agree that the Shiites will respond. But we don’t agree on the magnitude of the response? The office of the prime minister exists to resolve just such disagreements. I want you to prepare a retaliatory strike against four military targets in Sinai and two in the Egyptian mainland.”

  “That is flirting with war. Is it worth it?”

  “Colonel. Do you refuse to carry out my instructions?”

  “Of course not. I merely offer my opinion.”

  “Good. You are a competent man and I don’t want to replace you. So let me make this clear. I want you to pick the targets yourself. I want you to work up strike plans for all combinations of the targets. Don’t worry. I will give the order to strike only if they attack us first. I am not a fool. But I will not tell you which strike plan to use until I give the strike order. When you have finished your Egyptian strike plans I want you to work out a second set of strike plans to deal with how the Shiites might respond to our retaliation. This country will not stand for a second Eilat. Understood?”

  “Understood. But what counts as an attack? A suicide bombing in a shopping mall? Nanopoison in the water supply? Who defines it?”

  “I do. The taxpayers pay you to plan contingencies. Go plan them.”

  Chapter 37

  Near Abaq

  Inner Mongolia

  People’s Republic of China

  General Feng held a fresh yellow carrot by its green tassel and fed it to the red pony.

  Feng grew carrots and white radishes and onions in a square plot of land behind his cabin. He had mixed dried horse manure with the orange-red dirt and mulched the plants with old horse straw to hold in the moisture. The old Chinese Communists had taught him such things as a boy in his village of Erenhot.

  The Communists cared a great deal about farming the desert. He could never understand why they spent so much time and money on agriculture. Feng could still remember the dumb farming programs the Communists used to run on their state TV.

  The Communists had forced his whole village to plant fruit trees and tend root crops. The people had to do this even if they worked all day to tend their herds of sheep and goats and horses and sometimes camels. Most of the apple and peach trees had died of thirst or produced only a few twisted fruit. The potatoes had refused to grow beyond small brown nodules that they had to feed to the horses.

  His uncle Rago had laughed at his young nephew for spending so much time with the Chinese gardens. Rago had worked as a hide tanner and horseman and taught what he could to Ulan before the Chinese sent him to Xian and made him Feng.

  Feng was too old now to practice the horseman’s tricks of his uncle. Instead he liked to groom and ride this pony and think the thoughts of his youth that he had ignored for so many decades.

  They were all so old now.

  China had held over one fourth of the world’s elderly since 2020. It was the largest gray population on earth and Feng was part of it. What made him smile was that the old gray schemers now trusted him to protect them.

  Major Yu found the general in the army stable.

  Yu had often laughed with his officer friends that Feng belonged on an old-folk’s farm. He did not know why the powers in Beijing and Shanghai still humored the old man and tried to win his favor. The young officers ran the compound. This compound was but one among hundreds throughout China.

  “General Feng. I just spoke with General Qi.”

  Feng did not look at Yu.

  He fed the pony the green tassels of the carrot and rolled a second yellow carrot in his other hand. He had seen devious men like Yu since he was a Red Guard. The Chinese bureaucracy still seemed full of them.

  Feng thought the Communists deserved much of the blame but he was not sure. Perhaps their Maoist atheism had replaced and scrubbed out the moral training most kids learned from their parents and from society. But Mao had been dead a long time. The devious men still came in great numbers. And Feng did not know what Chinese children learned these days from their schools and from the Americans.

  “General Qi wants to have a conference with you. He says it is urgent.”

  Feng fed the second carrot to the red pony.

  Yu watched the big yellow teeth chop the carrot in chunks and thought about the new teeth enzymes they sold in Shanghai. He would have to get some. He had let the sides of his front teeth fill with yellow plaque. It was this damned Mongol outpost. Yu hated it and its bad water and its canned rations and chemical toilets.

  What did they do that mattered? They played tank games that no one in Beijing cared about. Each week they re-aimed their smart missiles at targets in Siberia and Japan and Korea and the Pacific fleets. They had no thought of firing them.

  The compound was just a massive ammo dump on the frontier to nowhere. Yet Yu knew that real-time satellite links and wireless networks could change that in seconds. The Chinese could make the Abaq compound part of the biggest digital battlefield in the world.

  “General. I think General Qi wants to speak to you about the Russians. They are massing on the border of Yakutia!”

  Feng held the end of the green tassel. He let go of it to give the pony the last bite.

  Never show them.

  The silence of Feng scared Yu. The young man left the stable to tell his friends about it.

  Chapter 38

  Interstate-15

  Mojave Desert

  Southern California

  John felt the bite in his arm.

  He soon came out of a swirling dream of flashing green lights and red-rock desert and the cool blue waters of the Colorado River. It was fever sleep but the only sleep he had had in over a day. His brain had made the most of it.

  Raquel pulled the needle out of his arm. She held a cotton ball dabbed in alcohol against the small wound.

  John sat up with his eyes open and felt the room start to spin.

  “Head hurt?” Eytan said. “Sorry about that. We had to make it look like a kidnapping. Your little assault almost got you killed. That was stupid.”

  “Shalom to you too,” John said. “Kidnapping is a felony.”

  John felt his head ring when he said it. He also felt the soft road vibrations and the inertial pull as the large white van slowed on the highway. He looked around at the well-stocked room and the six Israelis.

  Eytan sat on a box and smiled at him.

  “I thought you were in Israel,” John said.

  “I’m a wandering Jew. This meat truck is my own private Israel. Like it? Even has a self-cleaning toilet. We’ll be in Nevada in about two hours. We’ll have plenty of time left for the demo.”

  “The demo? You’re kidding. I need something to eat.”

  “Aaron.
Find John one of those carbo drinks you brought from the gym. We need to raise his blood sugar and keep it up.”

  “Where is that self-cleaning toilet?” John said.

  “Left front corner. Do us a favor and wash your armpits while you are in there.”

  John walked slowly to keep his balance.

  The head pain was bad but not as bad as it had been that morning. The nap had helped. John’s ribs still felt raw and so did his lower lip. He tried not to think of the flesh pain and instead focused on what he had signed.

  Did Catton take a copy? Did the Israelis take the suitcase from Rittenhouse?

  Aaron gave him a plastic bottle of sweet red fluid when he got back. John drank it in gulps and gave the empty bottle back to Aaron.

  Eytan still sat on the brown box. The other Israelis unpacked boxes at the front end of the large room.

  John found a box near Eytan’s box and sat on it and leaned back against the white plastic wall. He tried not to look at Eytan’s compact paunch.

  “Sore?” Eytan said.

  “Damn right I’m sore. Your agents here were real heroes. They left Richard and me for those LAPD baton twirlers. You ever been hit with a baton? I think they broke a rib or something. Where is Richard? Those CIA bastards said he signed away his rights to Water Dragon.”

  “So did you.”

  “What do you know about it? You took Rittenhouse’s briefcase?”

  “I have a copy in the computer. Means now you work as a consultant at the pleasure of the U.S. government. Your contract with us is still in effect but the Americans could challenge it and win if they wanted to. Of course we still expect you to consult for us. And everyone wants you at the demo tomorrow.”

  “That’s it? Back to business? What about Denise? Does she just go away?”

  “Thought that was what you wanted. You took the deal.”

  John thought of Jism and started to reach for the extra raisin in his wallet. He caught himself and stopped.

  His head was not clear yet and he did not trust Eytan and his Israeli agents. That raisin might be his last link to Jism. And John recalled that Jism had told him it was not safe to go to the demo at the Hoover Dam.