Aaron Conners
The Pandora Directive
Dedication
This book is dedicated to Gail Peterson (for the motivation); Chris Jones (for inspiration); Rob Peterson (for good Scotch and smoked); Mike, Jeanette, Bruce, Ivar, and Steve (for miscellaneous banter, etc.); and especially for my sweet Krissant for all the above and more.
Prologue
The world took a bullet in the head and now Old San Francisco floats face down in a red sea sky. No one ever really explained what happened. But now the heavens above are a bloody blanket, and the air we breathe is thick with radiation.
This year we bid adieu to the ozone layer and enact a time reversal. At least we don’t have to reset our watches. The banks still open for business at nine, only now it’s 9:00pm. The Surgeon General decided that sunlight was becoming almost as hazardous as cigarette smoking and real butter. It doesn’t matter to me. I’ve never kept regular hours.
My name’s Tex Murphy and I’m a PI. Somebody somewhere screwed up and sent me here about a century too late. I should be driving a 38 Packard with a running board and whitewalls. Instead, I fly a 38 Lotus speeder. At least I wear the right uniform — soft felt fedora, silk tie, rumpled overcoat, and wing tips.
It’s April 2043, forty five years since World War III came and went. New San Francisco rose from the ashes, but it was reborn without any of the style or favour of the old city. So I hang my hat at the Ritz Hotel, in a particularly run-down section of Old San Francisco. I’m one of the few non-mutants in this part of town, but that doesn’t bother me. Some of my best friends are mutants. Besides, the rent is cheap and my apartment is big enough to hold my office.
Nothing much has changed since I moved to the city 20 years ago. All I ever need is a good bottle of bourbon, a fresh pack of Luckies, a decent haircut, and one more case.
Chapter One
Chelsee Bando looked deep into her vodka tonic. “I don’t know… maybe Phoenix.”
I flicked my thumbnail across the match tip and winced as a kernel of phosphorus lodged under the nail, then burst into flame. “So you want to move to the desert.” I lit my cigarette and took a deep drag. “Do you think you’re ready to face the danger and excitement of central Arizona?”
Chelsee looked up at me with those frosty blue eyes. As usual, my thighs quivered. She took a slow sip of Stohli and shrugged. “I’ve got an old college friend down there. We’ve kept in touch… she says it’s nice.”
“I can imagine. Square dancin’, ten gallon hats, huntin’ armadillos….”
Chelsee cut in, “… macho yokels with names like Tex.”
I leaned back and grinned. Chelsee smiled back, almost stubbornly. We raised our glasses and toasted, silently.
“OK, so why leave San Francisco? A city so wonderful that I choke up whenever I talk about it.”
Chelsee ran her finger tip around the rim of her glass in a way that made me quite jealous. “Is not here that’s the problem. It’s just… I feel like I’m stuck. Except, of course, for slowly sliding into another age bracket.”
“Listen, Chelsee. Age is nothing. It’s all in the attitude. Look at me. You don’t see me moaning about being 28, do you?”
She smiled despite herself and turned toward the window. “Oh, please. If you’re 28, I’m a nun.”
I leaned forward and crossed my arms on the table. “Well, like I said, it’s totally subjective. I think you’re ageing very gracefully. You don’t look a day over thirty.”
Chelsee turned back and gave me one of those looks. “I turn 30 tomorrow.”
My collar suddenly felt a bit warmer. “Did I say 30? I meant 26. I always get those two mixed up.”
Chelsee turned back toward the window. I wasn’t sure if I’d actually offended and her or if she was just trying to make me feel like an idiot. Either way, it made me want talk fast. “Look, Chelsee, the bottom line is, if you weren’t a nun, I’d chase you up to my love nest and… “
“Spare me the details, Tex.”
Chelsee glanced from the window directly to her watch. “It’s getting late — I’m going home.”
She got up and out of the booth and slipped on her coat. I tried to get her to look at me. She was even more difficult to read today than usual. As for me, if I’d had a tail, I would have been wagging it.
“Big date, eh?”
Chelsee threw her purse over her shoulder and looked down at me in a distinctly caustic manner. “Oh, yeah. Cary Grant… and a pint of Haagen Dazs. Hold me down.” She picked up her vodka tonic, drained it, then slammed it back to the table. “See you later.”
I watched her walk to the door, hoping she would pause, turn, and throw me a wink.
She didn’t. I turned back to the table and buried the live end of my Lucky in the teeming ashtray.
“What a schmuck!”
I looked over to see Rook Garner swirled around on his usual bar-stool, smugly reclining on his elbows — a wrinkly little bastard in sensible shoes. How could I have missed the psychosomatic scent of vinegar in the air? Suddenly, I felt defensive. “What?!”
Rook shook his head and turned back to his beer mug. “You’re the PI. Figure it out for yourself.”
Behind the bar, Louie showed off his big, ugly grin and idly polished a shot glass. “How are things going with Chelsee, Murphy?”
“Why? You thinking of making your move, Louie?”
“No. Just wondered how she was holding up — big Three-oh and all.”
Rook barked at me over his shoulder. “If I were your age, I’d already had a ring on that girl’s finger. You would too, if you had any sense.”
Louie chuckled and said the shot glass under the counter. “Rook seems to think you don’t know how to romance a lady.”
A snorting sound came from rocks general direction. “He doesn’t know squat!”
A gravelly voice piped up from the end of the bar. “Maybe she just doesn’t like him like that.”
A lavishly powdered hooker was curled around a cracked vinyl seat, looking to trade her soul for spirits, if she could find a taker. She took a drag off a thin, brown cigarette crammed into a cheap, plastic holder. “Love or money. Got to be one or the other. Nothing personal, but he ain’t no Adonis.” She paused to take a slug of quadruple malt. “Probably too old for her, too.”
Too old? I was stunned. Rook jumped in. “I was 32 years older than my second wife. And she was a real beauty.”
“Age don’t matter… unless you ain’t got two dimes to rub together. This fella don’t like he can support himself, not to mention the girl.”
The hooker picked up her drink and sashayed away from the bar. I pulled another lucky out of the crumpled pack. Being assaulted by a hooker — or Rook, for that matter — didn’t really bother me, but I was being stupid, chasing after a kid like Chelsee. I was speeding toward my 40th birthday like a derailed train, though a dab of white-out on my birth certificate had made that my own little secret.
I tossed back the rest of my bourbon. My bladder suddenly felt like a medicine ball. I slid out of the booth and tipped my hat to Louie and Rook. “If you gentlemen will excuse me, I need to powder my nose. You know how it is for us older guys.”
As I left the men’s room a few minutes later, I passed a figure sitting motionless in a dark corner of the cafe. This man’s face was obscured, but I could feel his eyes on me as I walked back to my booth. When I sat down, I kept him casually in my peripheral vision. Every few seconds, his arm would lift and a tiny light would flare up, followed by a stream of smoke. Even from across the room, there was no mistaking the smell — Cubanas. Expensive, and hard to get in this part of the world. They were the best smoke a man could have — rich, full-bodied. My mouth watered ever-so-slightly.