“Kaz?”
It was a faint, pained voice. Kazimir lurched over the few meters from his seat to the edge of the water. Stig’s face was looking up at him.
“You made it!” Kazimir gasped.
“Just about. I’m not sure I can get out, Kaz.”
Kazimir splashed into the water and grabbed hold of his old tutor. Stig had virtually no strength left, so Kazimir hauled him out in a fireman’s lift and staggered into the house.
Stig lay on the couch while Kazimir locked up the windows and doors, activating the security system. When he’d pulled the drapes shut, he finally switched on the lights.
“I fucking hate swimming,” Stig moaned. A gill mask was hanging from its strap around his neck, its small red low-power warning light gleaming softly.
“Me, too,” Kazimir said. “But I remember who taught me.” He wrapped a blanket around Stig’s trembling shoulders, then started to undo his soaking, mud-smeared trousers.
Stig looked down and grunted a laugh. “Very gay. Let’s hope Myo’s team doesn’t come crashing through the window right this minute.”
“You want a drink?”
“God, no. No fluid. Not now, not ever again. I must have swallowed half of the canal network. I thought Earth had strict antipollution laws. Didn’t goddamn taste like it. I swear I was swimming through raw shit out there.”
Kazimir got the trousers off, and put another blanket around Stig’s legs. He was looking like someone who’d been rescued from the north pole. “Didn’t you have flippers?”
“Only to start with. I lost them along with everything else—” He laughed weakly. “Including the shirt off my back. Let this be a lesson to you, Kaz; doesn’t matter how good your gadgets and fallback plans are, real life doesn’t cooperate. Now for Christ’s sake tell me Adam retrieved the programs I brought back.”
“He got them.” Kazimir drew a breath ready to say: But, then thought better of it.
His hesitation didn’t go unnoticed.
“What?” Stig asked.
“The news shows announced it this evening: from now on there’s going to be an inspection of all cargo shipped to Far Away. Elvin and Johansson haven’t said anything, but it looks like we’re screwed.”
The station security people had cleared a big semicircular space around the left luggage lockers in the Carralvo terminal. Curious passengers on their way to catch trains lingered to see what the fuss was about. Eventually they were rewarded by the appearance of Paula Myo. There was a scattering of applause, someone even whistled appreciatively. She ignored them, watching impassively as the forensics team went to work on the locker. Tarlo and Renee stood behind her, fending off questions from the reporters who’d appeared, and the attentions of the CST security officer. They knew how much their boss valued an uninterrupted examination of any crime scene.
“So, is it coincidence?” Tarlo asked. “Or is this their standard operating policy now, do you think?”
“Is what coincidence?” Renee said.
“Underwater getaway. Hey, if they start doing this all the time, maybe the navy will pay for us to be modified. That would be cool, I could handle growing a dolphin sonar.”
“Yeah? I can think of something useless it could replace on you.”
“That’s seen a lot of use, thank you.”
“It isn’t standard operating policy,” Paula said. “Our target today was a Guardian. The Venice Coast operative was working for someone else.” Nigel Sheldon. But how did he benefit from all this? Why allow the Guardians to smuggle arms to Far Away, then attack a merchant they contract? It didn’t make sense.
“Are you sure he was a Guardian today?” Tarlo asked.
Renee shot him a warning look, but Paula didn’t react.
“Our problem is we don’t know what they’re hoping to accomplish next,” Paula said. “This new stage is puzzling. Renee, I want you to put together a new team to study the equipment we know Valtare Rigin was putting together for them.”
“The weapons division report said there were too many unknowns,” Renee said cautiously. “They couldn’t give us a definite use.”
“I know. Their trouble is they’re made up from solid thinkers. I want to go off the scale with this one. We’re in the navy now, there shouldn’t be any problem finding and drafting specialists in weapons physics, especially ones with overactive imaginations. Get me a list of possible uses, however far-fetched.”
“Yes, Chief.”
The navy lieutenant in charge of the forensics team came over to Paula and saluted. Tarlo and Renee tried hard not to smile.
“We’ve got a family match on the DNA residue, ma’am,” the lieutenant said. “You were right, he is from the Far Away clans. We’ve gathered enough samples in the past to confirm the correlation; he’s a seventh or eighth descendant of Robert and Minette McSobel. Given the level of inbreeding, it’s hard to say which.”
“Thank you.” Paula turned to Tarlo and raised an eyebrow.
He gave an elaborate shrug. “Sorry, Chief.”
“All right then, we know there’s another active equipment smuggling operation, probably being run by Adam Elvin. Start putting together some options for tracking it.”
…
The professional’s little office had a desk with an array that connected directly to the Clinton Estate’s network. He moved the corpse to one side, wiped away the blood that had burst from the man’s neck when it was wrenched backward, and put his hand on the desktop array’s i-spot, opening a direct channel into it. Software from his inserts infiltrated the Estate network. The club had extremely sophisticated routines, hovering just under RI level. Given its clientele, it was inevitable that the security would be top-rated. That was what made it the ideal place for the extermination. People were comfortable enough to let their guard down here.
His software identified the nodes that served the club’s squash courts, and infiltrated their management programs as diagnostic probes. The nodes couldn’t be crashed, that would be detected by the network regulator immediately. What he wanted was the ability to divert emergency signals.
When he was satisfied his subtle corruption was integrated and functioning, he changed his clothes, slipping into the white shirt and shorts that was regulation for the club’s sports staff. He waited in the office for forty-one minutes, then picked up a squash racquet and walked down the short corridor to the court that Senator Burnelli had booked for his lesson.
The Senator was already inside, warming a ball up. “Where’s Dieter?” he asked.
“I’m sorry, Senator, Dieter is off sick today,” he said, and shut the door. “I’m taking his lessons today.”
“Okay, son.” The Senator gave an affable smile. “You’ve got a hard task ahead of you. I got beaten by Goldreich’s aide this week. It was humiliating. And now I’m looking for a little payback.”
“Of course.” He walked toward the Senator.
“What’s your name, son?”
His hand came around fast, chopping into the Senator’s neck. There was a loud snap as the man’s spine snapped. The Senator’s body turned limp and fell to the floor, inserts shrieking in alarm.
He paused for a second, checking his software to see that none of the network nodes were relaying the alert. The diverts were working, routing the dying man’s calls for help to a useless onetime address code. He clenched his hand into a fist, and used his full amplified strength to smash it into the Senator’s face. Thompson Burnelli’s skull shattered from the impact.
TWENTY-TWO
We had stories of small strange animals that were not animals who could sometimes be seen in our forests,” Tochee said through the array’s translator program. “There are also stories of forests that have other forests inside them, hidden from normal travelers. But as we entered the age of reason and science, such stories faded into legend. Nobody in modern times has experienced either. Even I treated them as stories generated during our primitive past and used to explain some facet of nature, or act as a warning to younger family members. It was my venerable elder family parent who planted the doubt in my mind. Just before the elder died, it told me it had seen the small not-animals, and even ventured along a path to an inner forest many years ago when it was a youngster, before technology became so widespread. For me, the idea that such legends were not legends, but could actually be experienced, was too much to ignore. I made my plans quietly, without telling my colleagues, and set off to the forest where my elder parent said it visited the inner forest. I spent many days exploring, and eventually realized I was not only lost, but also no longer on my own world. And now I have my own stories to tell which are greater than all of those collected in our archive.”