An Eighty Percent Solution Part 16

"By all means." Suet nodded.

Frances sent a coded signal. Detonators didn't need to be visible to work. The supposedly inert explosives in the guard shack vaporized the remaining guard, Mike, as well as a 30 meter section of fence and all the sensing equipment, leaving a gaping hole for the trio to stroll through before the real fireworks began.

Only a single light shining down on the desk held away the darkness. The corner windows showed only full night outside, one with no moon. Alone, late at night, Mitch Anson leaned back in his leather executive chair dictating a memo, eyes rolled up to the ceiling. His nostrils flared.

"It's clear that the ubiquitous nature of your failings proves you cannot be trusted at your current rank. Thus it is my duty to inform you that you are demoted two ranks, with a commensurate reduction in pay in the amount equal to eleven point four percent. Sincerely, Mitch Anson." His breath raced and a flush covered his face.

o.r.g.a.s.m was the only word to describe Mr. Anson's demeanor. Mr. Marks thought to himself that sometimes one's work truly delighted one. He watched as Anson's respiration slowed to normal.

"Excuse me," came Mr. Marks's quiet interruption. Anson, startled, sat bolt upright in his chair. He looked about wildly for the source of the voice, but found none. "Lights!" he demanded insistently.

"Unrecognized voice command," came a soft feminine voice. "The Portland Metropolitan Police have been notified."

"I'm very sorry, Mr. Anson, but I've already disabled your computer access."

"Who are you, you soon-to-be-unemployed Nil? This is not a place for practical jokes or hacking!"

Mr. Marks stepped forward into the arena of light around the desk. Anson's face lost its color. His mouth dropped open, only exceeded in size by the wideness of his eyes.

"Cancel emergency call."

"Call cancelled, Mr. Marks."

"I...er...I'm sorry," Anson stammered.

"Sir, I've come to deliver a message," he said in silky tones.

"B-but I didn't do anything."

"Sir, you needn't bother with the scatter-pistol built into your desk. This shouldn't be that kind of message. I do, however, have to inform you that Nanogate won't be needing your services in the future."

"What did I do wrong?" Anson demanded, slamming both palms down on his desk as he stood to face Marks. "I've given everything to this corporation and now you're firing me?"

"Oh, you mistake me, sir. I'm not going to fire you. You're going to resign."

"What?! There is no way I'll resign!"

"You will resign, sir, or we're going to go on to 'that kind of message.'"

Mitch sat back down. "Why? What did I do? I don't understand. I've done everything our corporation has asked for and more."

"It's the 'more' that's being objected to, sir. Your hiring of the bounty hunters to go after Mr. Sammis might've interfered with an ongoing corporate operation, had it not been caught in time. I personally removed all four of your hirelings." Mitch started almost imperceptibly. "Ah, there are more. How many more did you hire, sir?" Marks took only half a step forward.

"One. Only one more."

"Excellent." Marks didn't have an o.r.g.a.s.m, but a smile crossed his face nonetheless. "Now, you can dictate your resignation while I watch. Then you will simply disappear. I suggest you remain off the net for the rest of your life. If you ever show up, one of us will pay you a visit...of 'that kind,' sir."

The group sprawled around a red and white checked linen cloth spread beneath one of the trees in an idyllic park. They carried a picnic basket and munched on fried chicken, even if the real chicken content of their dish equaled zero. As everywhere, protein contents were subst.i.tuted interchangeably. Since very few foodstuffs still grew on Earth, and chickens never really took to s.p.a.ce travel, they were on the endangered species list.

A gentle breeze brought the briny smell of a nearby simulated ocean.

"I always wanted to spend the afternoon in here but couldn't afford it," Tony said as he leaned back against the trunk of the tree.

"This seems obscene," Suet said clearly.

"It does seem out of place," Sonya offered quietly from her typical lotus position.

"I know," Tony offered, "but the best place to hide is in plain sight-purloined letter style."

"It still seems as if we're inviting the enemy to our meetings," Andrew shuddered, looking at the huge Nanogate sign hanging on the side of the building that enclosed the wooded acreage.

"Don't worry. Our cover as the Beaverton Bomber Bowling League went over perfectly. Many of the bowling leagues have buy-ins just for this kind of thing after the season's over."

"But the DNA scanners we submitted to?"

"We be nab' on the way ou'..."

"Not going to happen," Augustine interrupted. "With the information Tony supplied about the security on the low-risk areas, I easily rode into Nanogate's files and switched all our DNA profiles with those of some midlevel functionaries in other companies."

"Yeah, I can just imagine the visits they'll receive when this finally unravels, all thanks to our local net jock." Tony nodded at the elderly woman, his friend. "And before you ask, she's already masking our conversation-replacing it, actually, with bits and pieces of other groups of visitors amongst the trees."

"What about eyes?"

"The floating surveillance is also being similarly redirected," Augustine said in disgust. "You think I'm not thorough?" No one commented into her challenging stare.

"I think we can safely call this meeting to order," Sonya said. "I'd like to congratulate Andrew, Jonah, and Frances for their rather spectacular destruction of the Nanogate factory in Lusk, Wyoming."

"Grats!" several yelled boisterously.

"Agreed. The planning and execution rivaled perfection itself," Sonya said, adding to the praise. Frances blushed while Andrew just got more solemn. "The results speak for themselves. Our recruitment of operatives and the monetary contributions from anonymous donors is at an all-time high, even though Augustine's shrewd stock market moves have made the latter less important than ever. But even more impressively, despite the firm lid Nanogate put on all our deeds, their stock has plummeted to nearly all-time lows."

"As good as this is," Tony said in a prearranged tradeoff from Sonya, "it isn't enough. We need more. We need to drive Nanogate into bankruptcy, but frankly I'm running out of targets. Does anyone have any that we've missed?"

Augustine offered her opinion almost immediately. "I've done thorough research on all of Nanogate's properties, both those publicly disclosed and those that aren't. There's some small off-planet facilities and a few distribution points we might target, but that's about all. I might suggest we use the noobs on these targets. They're much higher risk now that everyone's alerted to our modus operandi."

"Good idea," Tony jumped in. "I was afraid Nanogate might be too narrow of a target."

"Too narrow? You're the one that told us we needed to narrow our targets," Linc said, sitting up from his semi-reclined position leaning on one elbow.

"Yes, but many of these companies are linked, if you'll pardon the pun. Other companies are funneling money to Nanogate to keep them afloat. We need to find these others and target them as well."

Linc said gruffly, "Want me to tail your cheating wife-fine. Want me to dig up the guy that stole your ident.i.ty on the wire-fine. Want me to figure out how companies are interlinked-I'm lost."

"Oh, don't go being pessimistic, yet."

"Check other companies' stock prices against Nanogate's for correlation over time," Christine said in her normally empty tone. That she spoke at all kept the entirety of the group stunned and looking at her for several moments. Her eyes still held their near vacant expression. Tony wondered what went on behind those eyes, then decided he didn't want to know and shuddered visibly.

"I have correlations," Augustine said. Her surgical link provided nearly instantaneous access to data from the web. Her smile said it all. "Nanogate stock and the stock of seven, possibly as many as ten, other corps fluctuate as a single ent.i.ty, albeit one to two orders of magnitude out of phase."

"Gentlebeings, I would say that we have additional targets."

Greysky scratched his left arm where flesh met synthetic as he leaned inconspicuously in the steel-irised doorway of the ground level slum. In the eight years since he had voluntarily traded his meat limb for one of plastic and metal, imbalances in the nerve-to-circuit junctions made themselves known as an itching sensation.

As a freelance artist, Greysky had been doing private enforcement work for nearly ten years. That his PE license expired the previous year didn't matter. A license meant eight hundred credits a day, in the wrong direction.

Over the top of his projected solido-paper he surrept.i.tiously watched a tube hotel across the street, its garish pink neon sign at least forty years old.

"Sleeping tubes disinfected daily," crackled an almost incomprehensible electro-mechanical speaker. "A full half cubic meter more s.p.a.ce than chain hotels." Transient quarters all over the world were the same. Put your credit into the slot and slide into a 2.5 meter long by 1 meter wide cylinder for twelve hours of relative insulation from the outside world. This particular tube sleeper even accepted coins and paper bills, catering to those who didn't even have universal credit.

Greysky snorted softly. He remembered having to resort, at one time in his life, to sleeping in one of those plastic coffins-and that's what they usually were, too, coffins. People live there and die there. They never lift themselves above a grinding level of poverty and their only purpose is to be insignificant monetary bits in an immense economic machine. Greysky's finances long ago warranted a home far from this place. He was the exception. But then he wasn't here to sleep-he was here to deliver a message.

Just as he started reading the story, "Pope Vows to Increase Heretic Deportations," the intended recipient of his current employers' missive walked into the lobby of the sleep establishment. The blond hair, a rare trait these days, gave him away.

Greysky leaned farther into the doorway, striking a coffee stick on the wall next to him and tucking the business end into his mouth. Watching through his magnifying eye, his target put coins into tube 312 and climbed in. The tube end went opaque, making it time for Greysky to deliver.

He angled across the street diagonally, not pushing people out of the way but blending into the rest of the dest.i.tute throng. He put his head down and shuffled along, the bulk of his body and the tools of his trade hidden amongst the people and his shin-length jacket. As the pink neon bathed him, he pounded on the end of 312.

"Message for Mitch Anson."

"What?" said a voice from beyond the door as it opened. "Who knows-"

Greysky released the tiny spoon of the implosion grenade. "This is a gift from your former employees." He flicked the fingertip explosive into the oval opening and slammed the door down on the surprised face.

Greysky felt the m.u.f.fled explosion conducted through the street. He walked calmly away, already mentally spending his commission.

"So where are we off to this grand morning?" Tony asked brightly. For Portland at ground level, the day positively shined, with the barest of moisture drifting in the air and no clouds to speak of. The near silence of the time after night owls lay slumbering and the day seekers hadn't quite emerged gave a rare pleasant experience.

As nothing came without its polar opposite, the brightness highlighted the filth. Nearby, a discarded washing machine on its side rusted itself into oblivion as it spilled rotting garbage from its insides onto the cracked pavement. The quiet allowed Sonya to hear several insects vying for the muck. The smell of fresh sewage, free from the rain, wafted up. Sonya sketched a little frown with her mouth, not because of the smell but rather the question. An experienced terrorist wouldn't have even asked. He or she should trust their leaders and just follow. Despite Tony's exceptional ideas and directions for the GAM, he still avoided embracing the lifestyle.

"Have I said something wrong?" Tony inquired after she didn't reply right away.

As they walked along, Sonya ground off the burrs of her short fingernails along the walls of the ground-level masonry like some gigantic emery board. She chided herself for her annoyance. "No. I just sometimes forget. You're so sophisticated in some ways and so downy fresh in others. Remember the tired old line from the old flaties, 'I could tell you but then I'd have to kill you?'"

"Yes."

"Well, whenever you ask a question, you should think about whether you really want the answer." She watched Tony's face get thoughtful. He learned well, she thought to herself, when he learned.

It wasn't as if she ignored the trio of heavily modified muggers lounging in the inset doorway, she just didn't care. The three marched out, one drawing a modern variation of nunchaku, two short steel bars with a chain between. One sported an ancient police baton and the other a makeshift club. She knew they intended to kill. It didn't matter. Before Tony even noticed their approach, the trio, as one, found an overpowering urge to head to the local bar for a frosty brew, all thoughts of mayhem erased, for now.

Tony hitched the shoulder pack back up, prompting a plaintive mew from within. "Sorry, Cin."

"She travels better than most cats," Sonya said over the rather loud buzz of an ancient motorized bike that rushed by in a cloud of petroleum smoke.

"I guess she's still young. OK, if you won't tell me where we're going, can you at least tell me what we're going to do? I don't even have so much as a pea shooter with me."

"Good. Less to be found." A shiver of happiness ran through her. She took a childish delight in teasing him. Food vendors began to flock the early morning streets, beginning their raucous calls for customers in twelve different languages from Hebrew to Esperanto. Tony frowned. He opened his mouth as if to speak and then closed it. "We're off to meet the Family," Sonya said, taking pity on her friend.

"Whose family?"

"The Family, with a capital 'F'. At least that's how they stylize themselves again."

"Got it." Tony once again opened his mouth and closed it suddenly. He did learn. "Ever been married?"

"Married?" She snorted at the thought as much as the sudden change in subject. "Like any man or woman would have me." She turned into an arbitrary building and started up the steps. Long ago she learned that in their line of work randomness foiled more mishaps than it caused.

"Why not? You're attractive, in a lean tigress kind of way."

"Check six," she whispered back on the first landing. She felt no one, but that didn't mean they didn't exist. She faded into a doorframe, pulling her cloak tight about her to mask her presence. It didn't work against cameras, but living people easily let their senses overrule their common sense. Tony continued up the second floor chatting as he went.

"Of course you aren't my cup of tea. I wasn't offering myself as a potential mate, termed or otherwise."

Tuning out her partner as he moved away, Sonya felt the building move gently beneath her feet and through the fingertips that she rested on the doorframe. The white noise of movement which engulfed her included eight different s.e.xual escapades, three couples arguing about credit, one weapons discharge, seventy different breakfasts, a myriad of mice and insects, six aerobics cla.s.ses and too many other things all too jumbled up to make sense of. What she didn't feel was someone tailing. No one took the steps coming up behind her. No one dashed ahead to get into a building in front of her. Flowing out of the shadows, she dashed up the stairs to rejoin her comrade.

"So?"

"No one following."

"No. Why not?"

"Why not what?"

"Why haven't you ever been married?"

"I guess I'm attractive in my own way, but I'm a hermit. Having someone around me all the time would send me off the deep end. My personal privacy is too important. I don't want anyone to have control over my life."

"It doesn't have to be that way."

Sonya snorted again. She stepped around a wino living on the fourth floor landing. "And you're an expert?"

"Well, no. But my parents managed to make it work."

"Without getting in each other's way? Without integrating themselves in each other's lives? I don't believe it," she snapped as shrilly as Tony remembered ever hearing her.

"Wow, the way you say it makes it sound like a virus or parasite."

She took the time for a cortico-thalamic pause, that brief moment between stimulus and response. In her case it took five floors, and two building transfers. Finally, she replied in her normal, mellow tones. "Sorry, but you hit one of my soap box topics," she explained, jabbing the call b.u.t.ton of an old-fashioned elevator with particular vehemence. "I like my life. I don't want to change my life. Anyone I add to it would change it. I've watched friends get married and in almost all cases become miserable, or change into someone I wouldn't want to call a friend."

To her surprise, Tony said nothing. She entered the elevator and pressed the combination for the eightieth floor. "Like most witches, I suppress my urges for domesticity or other entanglements with the companionship of my pets."

"I wasn't trying to make you angry," Tony finally offered, somewhere around the forty-fifth floor.