The first time it went off, she could feel him looking sideways at her. When she looked up at him and shrugged, looking back to her book, he grunted noncommittally and popped another piece of gum, but he didn’t seem worried from then on whenever the detector sounded — he just slowed down until the tiny red light on the cube player turned off.
It was mid-afternoon when he dropped her off at a gas station off the Hopple Street exit in Cincinnati. As she got her backpack and suitcase out, shook hands, politely fended off another job offer, and watched the van drive back off towards the interstate on-ramp, she could hear the strains of his cube music cruising through their perpetual shuffle… can’t revoke your soul for tryin’, Get out of the door and light out and look all around. Sometimes the light’s all shinin’ on me; Other times I can barely see. Lately it occurs to me…
She shook her head with a wry smile as he drove out of sight and took her stuff over to the pay phone to call herself a cab, then sat on the bus stop bench next to the phone and waited, studying her surroundings and the intermix of tall, very narrow old townhouses with small-scale industrial buildings on each side of the street. The bus stop was between the gas station and an appliance repair shop. Across the street, she could see bits of the downtown skyline through gaps between a couple of the houses and a squat, brick machine-shop, but most of it was grayed out into dim, jerky geometric shapes in the smog.
It gave General Beed a feeling of importance to be summoned — well, invited, really — to a meeting in Chicago to discuss his next assignment. After the war, well, there were a lot of old generals with a lot of experience who were, now, going to live a long time. He had been lucky to stay on active, running the Southeastern Regional Criminal Investigations Division. It was a more important position than it looked, at first, since the southeast was vital to the reclamation of the rest of the forty-eight states of the continental U.S.
This conference room would have done credit to any prewar Fortune 500 company — the glossy wood conference table, corporate art on the walls, the plush carpeting in one of those pinkish colors that probably had a fancy name, and fresh paint on the walls — it was all a throwback to a prewar opulence that you rarely saw these days, especially in the service. And the view from the Fleet Strike Tower was fabulous. Rank definitely had its privileges. He raised a hand to check by feel that his mustache was in order, running a light hand over his dark blond hair to check it as well, careful not to disarrange it — although with a good strong touch of hair spray that was not much of a hazard. He almost didn’t mind cooling his heels waiting for General Vanderberg. Almost.
The major general, when he came in, didn’t impress Beed. The exchange of salutes, as always, gave him a brief period to size the other man up and develop a first impression. Rejuv helped, of course, and he couldn’t fault the man’s uniform or grooming. Still, a general officer of Fleet Strike should look like a general officer, and this officer’s crooked nose, almost connected eyebrows, and leftover juvenile acne scars left an overall impression of, well, ordinariness, that was not, in his guest’s experience, representative of what a good general officer should be. Unfortunately, no one had asked him. Still, one showed respect for the rank, and the man at least appeared fit in a way that spoke of commendable continuing devotion to his PT. He had, like Beed, the whipcord runner’s build that one tended to associate with good soldiers, and he warmed a bit towards the other man.
“General, you’ve been ordered here in connection with a highly sensitive counterintelligence assignment. Before I go any further, let’s get this out of the way. The information I am about to relate to you is Top Secret Codename Hartford. You will not discuss any of this information with anyone not specifically on the list of persons cleared for Hartford; you are not authorized to add persons to the list of persons cleared for Hartford. The codename ‘Hartford’ is itself classified and you are not authorized to mention Hartford to anyone not on the list cleared for this operation. Do you understand?”
“I understand, sir,” he said gravely, straightening his already perfect posture.
“We have recently become aware, and acquired conclusive proof, that an organization hostile to both the Federation and Fleet Strike exists that has demonstrated both the will and ability to place agents within Fleet Strike at a fairly high level and have those agents operate undetected for extended periods of time. That is practically the sum total of the information we have about that organization, and we wouldn’t have that without a combination of a security failure on their part and a piece of good luck and good thinking on the spot.”
“Sir, that sounds…”
“Preposterous, impossible, outrageous — yes, I know. All of those. We’ve hesitated to speculate, out of concern for getting locked into preconceptions, but we’ve prepared a list of known groups or ideologies with hostility towards the Galactic Federation, or the nonhuman races, or Fleet Strike itself. They range from elements of the government of the United States to the humanist movement to Families for Christ.”
“Families for Christ?” Beed asked disbelievingly.
“They apparently strongly disapprove of the number of marriages that have broken up after only the husband was rejuvenated. They allege a successful Satanic conspiracy to destroy the American family. And, of course, there is some cross pollination between their group and the humanists.”
“With the U.S. government I presume you’re thinking of the Constitutionalist Caucus of the Republican Party?”
“Every group has its lunatic fringe. They’re still very unhappy that the original contracts with the Galactics for construction of the Sub-Urbs forbid any change to internal rules that make them weapons free zones for civilian personnel.” Vanderberg shrugged, “As I said, this part is only speculation. Our actual knowledge is appallingly scant. Your mission relates to an operational plan we have developed for remedying this problem.”
Vanderberg stood and began to pace.
“You will shortly be assuming command of the Third MP Brigade, headquartered on Titan Base. Most of the brigade is forward deployed, under able subordinates. Your XO, Colonel Tartaglia, is competent enough that, absent the rejuv bottleneck created by us oldsters, he’d have been promoted long ago. Your headquarters office is in close proximity to CID, which will give you a conceptually familiar environment and ample time and energy to devote to this mission. Because you’re going to need one person you can absolutely trust, I’m going to be sending my own aide with you as your new aide de camp. He’s fully cleared for Hartford material, and I’m sure you’ll find his services as helpful as I have.”
“Forgive me a minute, General, but did you say Titan Base? While it’s a prime command, I’m rather bewildered about why we’d select it for a counterintelligence operation.”
“Physical security is significantly greater on Titan. For various reasons we don’t believe the enemy organization, whatever it is, will be as strong there. After the first phase succeeds, we don’t want to take any chances on an extraction. But let’s go ahead and get your new aide in here.” He scratched his chin briefly.
“Jenny,” he addressed his AID, “send in Lieutenant Pryce.”
“Certainly, Peter,” the cool soprano voice answered.