And since she wanted to be dismissed, she’d bear extra watching.
Sighing, and with a full belly, I locked the door, stripped off my clothes and slipped into bed. I stretched out, expanding the indentation Elle had left on the bed and fell quickly to sleep. The thunderstorm that raged outside bled a bit into my dreams, transforming natural phenomena into the unnatural sights and sounds of war and yet somehow I slept through it all.
The next morning dawned bright. With the storm’s fury spent, the clouds had dissipated and the city awoke to crews cleaning up the damage rather efficiently. I washed up and headed out, watching them for a bit, then finding a little family diner where I sucked down enough grease and preservatives to lube a ’Mech and keep me in shape to be piloting until I was Victor’s age. That thought actually brought a smile to my face, which the waitress returned along with more coffee and my bill.
I strolled around the city, making mental notes about more targets and found plenty of them. Because of the lightning storms, most power and communications lines had been buried, but junction boxes existed everywhere. Had I a pocket full of plastic explosive and detonators, I could have cut one half of Manville off from the other during a casual walk.
Looking around at the people out shopping and heading to and from work, I saw a lot of happy faces and heard a lot of laughter. These were good people. They probably worked hard, loved their friends and neighbors and were kind to animals. Their lives were pretty good.
And if my plan went into effect, that would change.
I knew my plan would work, and that made me very uneasy. I felt frustrated because I knew there was no way to defend against it. Actually, that’s not true, there was: deny the enemy a reason to attack. If no one had any grievances, they wouldn’t initiate terrorist activity. In our case, the grievance was one of a personal lust for power and money. While lots of folks want those things, few have enough in the way of resources to finance a revolution to acquire more.
Where a terrorist group was determined to act, Low-Intensity Terrorism had no defense. As the government moved to give itself more tools to root out the terrorists, they would be depriving the citizenry of more personal freedoms, which would breed more dissatisfaction. If someone like Niemeyer toed the line but didn’t cross it, he’d have to be extremely lucky to stop the terrorists.
LIT also hit the government and corporate concerns hard where they could feel it: in the wallet. All too often people are classified as consumers or constituents and dismissed. C-bills and stones, on the other hand, show up on spreadsheets and determine stock prices and bonuses. Once those numbers start showing up in red, jobs are in jeopardy and action has to be taken. Corporations will stem losses as they must, ethically or not. While some might hire more security personnel to guard their assets, if we presented them with an economical plan where they could avoid that cost by buying themselves off our hit list, they’d choose our option.
I thought hard as I walked. LIT would bring the Germaynes down. It would take several months, but their government would fall apart, and Emblyn would be able to slide in to replace them. He’d be happy and, who knows, perhaps he’d even be good for Basalt. I could certainly hope that, because the Germaynes were history.
Of course, Emblyn’s taking control was predicated on his being Gypsy’s boss. I would have to confirm that. His taking over, however, wouldn’t quite be in keeping with my directive to preserve stability, unless, of course, the Germaynes were inherently unstable. I’d have to check into that, too.
My stroll took me all over Manville. I ate lunch at a trendy little place on the ground floor of the city’s tallest building. All around me people talked investments, stocks, money, politics and, of course, sex. People blurt out things in public places when they think they’re in a private conversation, not aware that the person sitting in the booth behind them is actually closer to them than the person they are facing. It was the usual who was doing what with whom and her husband not knowing about it, and while I say it was the usual, and that I’ve heard it a million times before, it’s just one of those things which ends up being fascinating.
Again, more of the cracks in the society made themselves apparent. Somehow it was more scandalous for a man to be going over to a Drac section of Manville to visit a house of ill repute, than his getting a “massage” at some cheap dive in a run-down Davion neighborhood down by the river. Those people were known to be dirty, after all, the whispered wisdom went, and they would couple with anything. The irony of one of the good folks being willing to lower himself was lost on these folks, but they fully succeeded in objectifying and dehumanizing people who, less than six months before, had been fellow citizens and friends.
Once I’d gotten my fill, I continued meandering. I stopped in at a file store and downloaded reading material into my noteputer. It was the usual tourist stuff: local atlas, highlights and hotspots, and other almanac-type data. To that I added an unauthorized Emblyn biography, the same for the Germaynes and a list of local charitable organizations and what they did.
By mid-afternoon I returned to the Grand Germayne and found I had a visitor, but not in my room this time. Elle emerged from the bar and smiled at me as I waited at the lift. I nodded. “I kept your place warm last night.”
Her smile broadened. “If only I could have slipped away.”
“Indeed, you wouldn’t have had to wait in the bar.”
Elle’s smile slacked a notch. “Oh, I don’t think Gypsy would have been welcome to wait with me.”
“No, indeed.” I glanced back at the bar. “Shall we?”
She didn’t take my arm, but did rub against me, which I did find distracting, as I am sure she intended. We crossed the lobby to the bar, which was elegantly appointed in deep mahogany and brown leather. The rest of the hotel might have aged less well than I could have hoped in the past century, but the bar had just gotten darker and imbued with an ambience that I greatly enjoyed.
Gypsy, attired casually in a jacket and slacks of black, white shirt and black shoes, lifted a drink at the corner table in a salute. I let Elle precede me to the table and took pleasure in watching her walk in her dark green dress. The fabric had a bit of a satiny sheen to it, but was not garish. The gold-link belt matched her bracelet and earrings, and even hinted at the gold chain pattern on the heel of her shoes.
I sat facing Gypsy, with my back to the room. Elle sat between us, to my right, with her left knee pressed against mine. When the waitress came, I looked at the bar and didn’t recognize any of the whiskies they offered, so I ordered a Diamond Negro.
Gypsy smiled. “You learn quickly.”
“Pays to know the battlefield.”
He nodded, sipping his drink which, as nearly as I could tell, was some mixed thing that wasn’t fruity, but doubtless was sweet. Elle had a tall, slender glass with a lime wedge in it. It could have been nothing more than tonic water and I idly wondered if I’d taste any alcohol if I kissed her. The waitress finished pouring my beer into a frosted glass—an amenity the Egg did not offer—and retreated.
Gypsy brought his glass forward. “To Cleansing Storm.”
I touched my glass to his and hers then drank. The beer did taste as good as I recalled and I flicked a drop from the corner of my mouth with a finger. “Cleansing Storm? Please don’t tell me that’s what Colonel Kitten wants to call some huge op.”