"She asked me to talk to you first."
"I see. Who the hell are you?" I was certain I knew his voice; it gave me eerie shivers. The last time I'd spoken to this man it had been bad news too.
"You don't recognize me, do you, Jim?"
"If I had, would I have asked?" I dropped my cases on the floor and shrugged out of my jacket. "You know, there are rules about invading people's private quarters-even for generals."
He tossed me a key. "Here. You can give this back to General Tirelli. Or just leave it on the desk there."
I decided not to stand at attention. Whatever trouble I was in, I probably couldn't make it any worse by making myself at home in my-our-own apartment. I started to pull off my boots, hesitated out of misplaced courtesy, then decided what the heck, he was here by his own choice, and pulled them off anyway. The olfactory result of three days in the same pair of sweat socks was worse than I had anticipated. For a moment I thought a gorp had crawled in and died. I peeled off the grungy socks and threw them into the fireplace, then padded barefoot into the kitchen, hoping to escape-but my feet insisted on coming with me. I grabbed a Coke from the fridge. "You want a refill?" I asked with hostile courtesy.
"I'm fine, thanks." He'd followed me into the kitchen. He rinsed out his glass and put it in the sink. "Jim," he said. "Don't run an attitude on me. This is serious."
"You still haven't answered my question."
"I'm your fairy godmother," he said. He wasn't joking.
"I've had enough to do with fairies today, thanks-"
"I'm Uncle Ira. "
"Bullshit. Uncle Ira's dead-I was there." It seemed like ages ago, but the memory was still terrifyingly real. The worm had been on the stage. In a glass case. The glass had broken. The worm had surged out into the auditorium. Into the audience. I shot out its eyes, first one and then the other. It had nearly killed me. Uncle Ira had been in the front row. He had been one of the first to die. Or had he?
Uncle Ira had been tall and thin, with dark curly hair and round glasses and bright blue eyes and a big nose and
"Oh God." The chill came sleeting up my spine. "It is you." The hand grenade went off somewhere behind my heart, and my brain went into overload, and about two nanoseconds later I started shaking. I felt like I was fainting. I put both hands on the edge of the sink and held on hard, waiting for the feeling to pass-it just got worse. I stared at the empty glass. My reality had been fragile enough; now it was crumbling. My throat was so dry, camels would have died in it. "Who else is still alive?" I managed to ask.
He shook his head. "I'm the only one."
"And even if you weren't, you'd still say you were. Everybody lies about everything."
He put his hand on my shoulder. "Look at me, Jim."
I pulled away and kept staring into the sink. "This is another shell game, isn't it? A shell within a shell within a shell."
"Remember the political circumstances of that conference? Most of the Fourth World delegates didn't even believe there were such things as Chtorrans then. They weren't there to cooperate with the United States. They were there to loot us; each of those delegates had an agenda. You saw them. I know you remember-you lost your temper and stood up to argue with Dr. Kwong in front of three thousand people. They knew we had a secret operation. They knew I was connected to it. So we faked my death when we released the worm. It lent credibility to the whole operation, and it gave us a chance to bury the real Uncle Ira operation so deep it didn't exist anymore."
"You mean the Uncle Ira operation I've been a part of-" Abruptly, the meaning of his words sank in. I looked up from the sink and stared at him, aghast. His eyes were incongruously sad. "It's only a cover, isn't it?" I said. "There's a deeper level."
"Yes, there is." He said it without emotion.
"And you're here to enroll me, aren't you? That's the way these things usually work. Or kill me, right?"
He shook his head. "No. We're not going to kill you."
"I suppose I should be relieved. But I'm not." I added, "You know, I always knew there was something going on. I just didn't know what it was. But I could sense things. Patterns. They didn't make sense. There was a level of relationships that I could never quite figure out."
"It's the best place to hide a secret. Inside another secret. When somebody finds the first secret, they're so pleased to have found it that they don't think to keep looking to see if there's more. The same way that the Special Forces serves as a blanket for the Unlimited Infantry, where you accidentally started, the UI covers the United Intelligence agency, where you accidentally ended up. That's what Uncle Ira really stands for, by the way. United Intelligence. And yes, the agency is really a cover for… an operation that doesn't exist and doesn't have a name. I don't exist. I have no authority. There's no budget. I have no office. And I serve under nobody's command."
"But you sit next to the President," I said.
"When I'm needed, yes," he confirmed.
"And Lizard?"
"She's a general in the Special Forces."
I realized I had my hand over my mouth. I was gripping the whole bottom half of my face in astonishment. I forced myself to lower my hand back to the counter. I picked up my Coke again and pushed past General Ira Wallachstein-yes, now I remembered his name-into the living room. He followed me silently.
I looked around for a place to sit. In my own home, I didn't even trust the furniture anymore. "You know, I wondered about it when we moved into this underground apartment. Why did we have to move into a security installation? What was so important that we had to live in, a class-A shielded bunker? Here we are in a radio-clean environment. No emissions. No leakage. You can't even use a portable phone in here. Everything is shielded wires, and every signal is coded and monitored or stopped at the door. I couldn't help but be curious. Why are we so important? So now I know. And I feel like a jerk. You've been using me. Lizard too, right? I've been just a-a utensil. Haven't I?"
He didn't answer fast enough. He looked like he was searching for the right phrase. I took it as assent.
"I see. Well, thanks for the enlightenment. I guess I'll go and pack-"
"You're already packed."
I stopped; I was already halfway to the bedroom door. "I beg your pardon?"
"You're already packed," he repeated.
I opened the bedroom door. There were three fat suitcases and a duffel bag on the floor. I turned around to face him. "I'm being thrown out?"
"Actually…" he began.
"You son of a bitch. You couldn't even let me save enough pride to leave on my own, could you?"
"If you'd let me finish-"
"Okay." I put my hands up in the air. "Go ahead. Tell me I'm a jerk. That's how these things usually play."
"Shut up, stupid," he said tiredly. "And listen. First of all, I don't know what kind of a bug you have up your ass, but ever since you completed the Mode Training, you've become one of the most self-centered, self-destructive shitheads I've ever met. No, no-don't bother taking a bow. You've earned the trophy on this one. You have the uncanny knack of being able to find shit, no matter where you are, just so you can step in it up to your armpits. Even worse, you manage to spread it around to everybody on your side so we can all enjoy it. You are a goddamn loose cannon. I can't begin to tell you what you've fucked up. You don't even give us a chance. If you'd sit down and wait once in a while and trust the people you work for-well, never mind. Frankly, you're more trouble than you're worth. Even Lizard thinks so." The last one hurt. The others, I hardly noticed them; I'd heard worse. But to hear that Lizard had abandoned me emotionally as well as physically
I sank into a chair. I fell backward into it. Hadn't I already had enough today? Why did I have to have this on top of it? I felt myself choking up. I stifled the sob before it came out. I could feel my face tightening; I put my hand over my mouth to cover my expression.