“Oh, no, I wouldn’t turn something like that loose unsupervised. It…hm. It’s too hard to describe without a few months of teaching, you don’t have any words for some of the forces involved. You don’t even have terms to use in a plausible lie, like the one about how a disintegrator works.”
That confused him. “I thought it reduced the charge on electrons.”
She shook her head. “And a slug pistol causes little pieces of metal to appear inside things. Another great Fission Age philosopher likened a man surrounded by forces beyond his comprehension to a mouse on a battlefield. A little difficult to explain what’s going on. The standard explanation of a disintegrator is like telling that mouse that humans are throwing things at one another. It leaves stuff out-like why the disintegrator doesn’t turn to dust.”
“So give me the mouse version,” Early said, annoyed again.
She shook her head again. “That’s the disintegrator example. Explaining the porosity trick would be more like trying to make the mouse understand that all this stuff on the battlefield is going on because a teenage French girl was prettier than her mother, who resented her and made her finish up some rye bread that had gone bad and should have been thrown away. The concepts just aren’t there.”
He recognized the example; he was a military historian. “Is that a serious explanation of Joan of Arc?”
She shrugged again. (In a properly run world, with her Protector’s shoulders, that would have made some kind of dramatic noise.) “It explains the visions, and some of her work displays the behaviors of an abuse survivor. It’ll do.”
“How come you don’t sound like Brennan?” he said.
“I’m not in a hurry,” she said. Before he could tell her that was hardly an answer, she said, “Sorry. This may come as a shock to a respectable ARM, but sometimes people with an agenda have been known to say and do things that are misleading.”
“If sarcasm was a physical substance, I’d be getting a rash.”
“Ooh, good one-Brennan could have sounded any way he wanted, but he was planning to steal a starship. He presented limitations he didn’t possess, to create a sense of security.”
“Like not letting Garner smoke, because he ‘couldn’t help himself’?”
She stood as straight as she could, which wasn’t very, and said, “Very good! And the story he told about how he killed Phssthpok. Claimed he stunned him with a blow to the head and crushed his throat. Sheer fantasy; Protectors don’t stun. The injuries on the corpse in the Smithsonian suggest he broke the Pak’s elbows with a Martian’s spear, cut the nerves-glass is sharp enough, if you have a Protector’s strength behind it-then strangled him before Phssthpok could heal enough to use his hands again.”
“I thought Ph-the Pak was stronger than he was. And a better fighter.”
“Marshall, the Pak store calcium phosphate in their mitochondria. As a reserve to rebuild broken bone it’s wonderful, but it displaces ATP. It’s as if every cell in the body has water in the petrol tank. The trait has been bred out of their human descendants, largely though suicide. Jack Brennan was at least thirty percent stronger than Phssthpok, and he would have been able to use any fighting move he’d ever seen on the cube. His biggest problem was leaving a presentable corpse.”
“But that didn’t have anything to do with his getting the Pak ship. Why would he lie?”
“Same reason everyone does. Saves time.”
He took a final puff as he tried and failed to think of a counterexample. It did all boil down to saving time. He stubbed out the cigar and said, “Time for what?”
“Time he’d have to spend later, if breeders knew he was alive, and had traps set for him when he came to make alterations. Ready to go rob some graves with me, Igor?”
“If you can turn invisible, what do you need me for?”
“I don’t want the stuff to just disappear, it’ll upset too many people. I prefer to make it look like the appearance of these generals is the result of breeder activities.”
“And you trust me to keep quiet?”
“A paranoid certainly grasps the concept of self-interest. You’re a breeder, but you’re an awfully smart one.”
He wasn’t sure whether he felt flattered or patronized. He decided he could do both. “Okay, got your shovel?”
She patted a pocket by her left knee. “All set.” While he was trying to decide whether she might really have a shovel in there-it could be a foil-covered balloon, and stasis fields were easier to make than the ARM ever wanted anyone to know-she handed him an earplug and said, “This will let you hear me. If I have a question, I’ll stick to yes or no, just nod or shake your head.” A bubble helmet deployed over her own head, and she disappeared again.
He put it in and said, “What if I have a question?”
“Oh, like you’d trust my answer,” came her voice, soft but clear. “That’ll evaporate in a couple of hours. If you decide there’s something you’d believe, get out your phone and write it unless you think it’s an emergency. Then I’ll stun people and erase memories afterward.”
He nodded, then went out the door.
On the long walk down the hall to the elevator-he’d had an apartment near an elevator back when he was (good God!) in his twenties; never again-he said in a low voice, “Just what’s the plan?”
“Shipping the materials to a secret lab offworld, where a crazed doctor has a plan.”
“So we’re sticking to the truth.”
“Hm! Right.”
“I surmise you have most of the arrangements in the system already,” he said.
“Of course.”
“Enthusiasm is no substitute for experience,” he said, and every part of the corridor was swept with sonic cannon except where he was. He dove for the hatch that opened up in the wall, went five stories down a slide that he’d swear hadn’t been that steep in the drill, came out into another hallway, and rolled against a transfer booth, whose door popped open. He wasn’t even tempted, he knew she could trace him if he used it. His phone was obviously bugged, so he came to his feet and ran to the emergency phone. Hand on the scanner, he said, “Marshall Buford Early crisis priority to Osiris Chen.”
The screen lit up.
It said COLD.
A bag of rocks wrapped around the back of his neck, and a rubber ball fitted neatly into his gaping mouth. Ursula’s head appeared next to his.
“Huh, yeah, what, Buford?” said the Chief of Internal Security.
Buford Early heard his own voice come out of Ursula’s mouth. “Ozzie,” she slurred, “I jus’ wanna tell you, you’re a rilly beau’ful person.”
“Where’s the picture?”
“Oh, off, ’m naked.”
There was a pause. “And you had to call me up at 3:18 to tell me.”
“Din wanna forget again. You deserve to know, an’ you can tell everyone I said so.”
“Oh, I will,” said Chen, who assuredly would.
“You gessum sleep now,” Ursula said, and the phone shut off.
The ball came out of his mouth, and he looked at her and said, “You unbelievably horrible bitch.”
“What? He sounded glad to hear it.”
It was boasted, in White Medical’s advertising, that nobody who used one of their ’docs every day had ever died of any of a number of ailments. The list included apoplexy. This turned out to be true.
When he had calmed down somewhat, largely due to lack of breath, Ursula said, “Do you know why ARM HQ security has never been breached? It was designed by Jack Brennan. The cheats are conspicuous, to me. And you really hoped you could catch a Protector.”
“Hope is a virtue,” he muttered.
“Hope is a narcotic, and it kills more people than wireheading. As witness the planet Pleasance. Marshall, you are free to waste your own time, but wasting mine is an act of sabotage in wartime. Do it again and I’ll dose you with something that’ll make you compulsively truthful for about five hundred hours, then turn you loose at the Belt Embassy. The next three weeks will be historic.”