The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge (55 page)

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Authors: Vernor Vinge

BOOK: The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge
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Phil licked his lips. “Christ. Everything happens at once. Look, I’m sorry, Ham. We’ve got orders from the top at Federal Security: nothing comes down, nothing goes up. There’s some kind of a ruckus going on amongst the Outsiders. If they start shooting, we want it to be at each other, not us.”
“That’s the point. We think this fellow is part of the problem. If we can get him back, things should cool off. You should have a note on him. It’s Antris ban Reempt.”
“Oh.
Him.”
Ban Reempt was the most obnoxious Tourist of all. If he’d been an ordinary Middle American, he would have racked up a century of jail time in the last six months. Fortunately, he’d never killed anyone, so his antics were just barely ignorable. Lucas pecked at his dataset. “No, we don’t have anything.”
“Nuts. Everything stays jammed unless we can get this guy Upstairs.” Hamid paused judiciously, as if giving the matter serious thought. “Look, I’m going back to the car, see if I can call somebody to confirm this.
Lucas was dubious. “Okay, but it’s gotta be from the top, Ham.”
“Right.”
The door buzzed open, and Hamid was jogging back across the parking lot. Things really seemed on track. Thank God he’d always been friendly with the cops running security here. The security people regarded most of the Guides as college-trained snots—and with some reason. But Hamid had had coffee with these guys more than once. He knew the system … he even knew the incoming phone number for security confirmations.
Halfway across the lot, Hamid suddenly realized that he didn’t have the shakes anymore. The scheme, the ad-libbing: it almost seemed normal—a skill he’d never guessed he had. Maybe that’s what desperation does to a fellow … . Somehow this was almost fun.
He pulled open the car door. “Back! Not yet.” He pushed the eager Blab onto the passenger seat. “Big game, Blab.” He rummaged through his satchel, retrieved the two comm sets. One was an ordinary head and throat model; the other had been modified for the Blab. He fastened the mike under the collar of his windbreaker. The earphone shouldn’t be needed, but it was small; he put it on, turned the volume down. Then he strapped the other commset around the Blab’s neck, turned off
its
mike, and clipped the receiver to her ear. “The game, Blab: Imitation. Imitation.” He patted the commset on her shoulder. The Blab was fairly bouncing around the Commander’s cab. “For sure. Sure, sure! Who, who?”
“Joe Ortega. Try it: ‘We must all pull together …’”
The words came back from the Blab as fast as he spoke them, but changed into the voice of the Middle American President. He rolled down the driver-side window; this worked best if there was eye contact. Besides, he might need her out of the car. “Okay. Stay here. I’ll go get us the sucker.” She rattled his instructions back in pompous tones.
One last thing: He punched a number into the car phone, and set its timer and no video option. Then he was out of the car, jogging back to the guard box. This sort of trick had worked often enough at school. Pray that it would work now. Pray that she wouldn’t ad lib.
He turned off the throat mike as Lucas buzzed him back into the visitor trap. “I got to the top. Someone—maybe even the Chief of Federal Security—will call back on the Red Line.”
Phil’s eyebrows went up. “That would do it.” Hamid’s prestige had just taken a giant step up.
Hamid made a show of impatient pacing about the visitor trap. He stopped at the outer door with his back to the guard. Now he really was impatient. Then the phone rang, and he heard Phil pick it up.
“Escrow One, Agent Lucas speaking, sir!”
From where he was standing, Hamid could see the Blab. She was in
the driver’s seat, looking curiously at the dash phone. Hamid turned on the throat mike and murmured, “Lucas, this is Joseph Stanley Ortega.”
Almost simultaneously, “Lucas, this is Joseph Stanley Ortega,” came from the phone behind him. The words were weighted with all the importance Hamid could wish, and something else: a furtiveness not in the public speeches. That was probably because of Hamid’s original delivery, but it didn’t sound too bad.
In any case, Phil Lucas was impressed. “Sir!”
“Agent Lucas, we have a problem.” Hamid concentrated on his words, and tried to ignore the Ortega echo. For him, that was the hardest part of the trick, especially when he had to speak more than a brief sentence. “There could be nuclear fire, unless the Tourists cool off. I’m with the National Command Authorities in deep shelter: it’s that serious.” Maybe that would explain why there was no video.
Phil’s voice quavered. “Yes, sir.”
He
wasn’t in deep shelter.
“Have you verified—”
clicket
“—my ID?” The click was in Hamid’s earphone; he didn’t hear it on the guard’s set. A loose connection in the headpiece?
“Yes, sir. I mean … just one moment.” Sounds of hurried keyboard tapping. There should be no problem with a voiceprint match, and Hamid needed things nailed tight to bring this off. “Yes sir, you’re fine. I mean—”
“Good. Now listen carefully: the Guide, Thompson, has a Tourist with him. We need that Outsider returned,
quickly and quietly
. Get the lift ready, and keep everybody clear of these two. If Thompson fails, millions may die. Give him whatever he asks for.” Out in the car, the Blab was having a high old time. Her front talons were hooked awkwardly over the steering wheel. She twisted it back and forth, “driving” and “talking” at the same time: the apotheosis of life—to be taken for a person by real people!
“Yes, sir!”
“Very well. Let’s—”
clicket-click
“—get moving on this.” And on that last click, the Ortega voice was gone.
God damned cheapjack commset!
Lucas was silent a moment, respectfully waiting for his President to continue. Then, “Yes, sir. What must we do?”
Out in the Millennium Commander, the Blab was the picture of consternation. She turned toward him, eyes wide.
What do I say now?
Hamid repeated the line, as loud as he dared. No Ortega.
She can’t hear anything I’m saying!
He shut off his mike.
“Sir? Are you still there?”
“Line must be dead,” Hamid said casually, and gave the Blab a little wave to come running.
“Phone light says I still have a connection, Ham … . Mr. President, can you hear me? You were saying what we must do. Mr. President?”
The Blab didn’t recognize his wave. Too small. He tried again. She tapped a talon against her muzzle.
Blab! Don’t ad lib!
“Well, uh,” came Ortega’s voice, “don’t rush me. I’m thinking. I’m thinking! … We must all pull together or else millions may die. Don’t you think? I mean, it makes sense—” which it did not, and less so by the second. Lucas was making “uh-huh” sounds, trying to fit reason on the blabber. His tone was steadily more puzzled, even suspicious.
No help for it. Hamid slammed his fist against the transp armor, and waved wildly to the Blab.
Come here!
Ortega’s voice died in mid-syllable. He turned to see Lucas staring at him, surprise and uneasiness on his face. “Something’s going on here, and I don’t like it—” Somewhere in his mind, Phil had figured out he was being taken, yet the rest of him was carried forward by the inertia of the everyday. He leaned over the counter, to get Hamid’s line of view on the lot.
The original plan was completely screwed, yet strangely he felt no panic, no doubt; there were still options: Hamid smiled—and jumped across the counter, driving the smaller man into the corner of wall and counter. Phil’s hand reached wildly for the tab that would bring the partition down. Hamid just pushed him harder against the wall … and grabbed the guard’s pistol from its holster. He jammed the barrel into the other’s middle. “Quiet down, Phil.”
“Son of a bitch!”
But the other stopped struggling. Hamid heard the Blab slam into the outer door.
“Okay. Kick the outside release.” The door buzzed. A moment later, the Blab was in the visitor trap, bouncing around his legs.
“Heh heh heh! That was good. That was really good!” The crackle was Lazy Larry’s but the voice was still Ortega’s.
“Now buzz the inner door.” The other gave his head a tight shake. Hamid punched Lucas’s gut with the point of the pistol. “
Now!
” For an instant, Phil seemed frozen. Then he kneed the control tab, and the inner door buzzed. Hamid pushed it ajar with his foot, then heaved Lucas away from the counter. The other bounced to his feet, his eyes staring at the muzzle of the pistol, his face very pale.
Dead men don’t raise alarums.
The thought was clear on his face.
Hamid hesitated, almost as shocked by his success as Lucas was. “Don’t worry, Phil.” He shifted his aim and fired a burst over Lucas’s shoulder … into the warehouse security processor. Fire and debris flashed back into the room—and now alarms sounded everywhere.
He pushed through the door, the Blab close behind. The armor clicked shut behind them; odds were, it would stay locked now that the security
processor was down. Nobody in sight, but he heard shouting. Hamid ran down the aisle of upgoing goods. They kept the agrav lift at the back of the building, under the main ceiling hatch. Things were definitely not going to plan, but if the lift was there, he could still—
“There he is!”
Hamid dived down an aisle, jigged this way and that between pallets … and then began walking very quietly. He was in the downcoming section now, surrounded by the goods that had been delivered thus far by the Caravan. These were the items that would lift Middle America beyond Old Earth’s twenty-first century. Towering ten meters above his head were stacks of room-temperature fusion electrics. With them—and the means to produce more—Middle America could trash its methanol economy and fixed fusion plants. Two aisles over were the raw agrav units. These looked more like piles of fabric than anything high tech. Yet the warehouse lifter was built around one, and with them Middle America would soon make aircars as easily as automobiles.
Hamid knew there were cameras in the ceiling above the lights. Hopefully they were as dead as the security processor. Footsteps one aisle over. Hamid eased into the dark between two pallets. Quiet, quiet. The Blab didn’t feel like being quiet. She raced down the aisle ahead of him, raking the spaces between the pallets with a painfully loud imitation of his pistol. They’d see her in a second. He ran the other direction a few meters, and fired a burst into the air.
“Jesus! How many did asshole Lucas let in?” Someone very close replied, “That’s still low-power stuff.” Much quieter: “We’ll show these guys some firepower.” Hamid suddenly guessed there were only two of them. And with the guard box jammed, they might be trapped in here till the alarm brought guards from outside.
He backed away from the voices, continued toward the rear of the warehouse.
“Boo!” The Blab was on the pallets above him, talking to someone on the ground. Explosive shells smashed into the fusion electrics around her. The sounds bounced back and forth through the warehouse. Whatever it was, it was a cannon compared to his pistol. No doubt it was totally unauthorized for indoors, but that did Hamid little good. He raced forward, heedless of the destruction. “Get down!” he screamed at the pallets. A bundle of shadow and light materialized in front of him and streaked down the aisle.
A second roar of cannon fire, tearing through the space he had just been. But something else was happening now. Blue light shone from somewhere in the racks of fusion electrics, sending brightness and crisp shadows across the walls ahead. It felt as if someone had opened a
furnace door behind him. He looked back. The blue was spreading, an arc-welder light that promised burns yet unfelt. He looked quickly away, afterimages dancing on his eyes, afterimages of the pallet shelves
sagging
in the heat.
The autosprinklers kicked on, an instant rainstorm. But this was a fire that water would not quench—and might even fuel. The water exploded into steam, knocking Hamid to his knees. He bounced up sprinting, falling, sprinting again. The agrav lift should be around the next row of pallets. In the back of his mind, something was analyzing the disaster. That explosive cannon fire had started things, a runaway melt in the fusion electrics. They were supposedly safer than meth engines—but they could melt down. This sort of destruction in a Middle American nuclear plant would have meant rad poisoning over a continent. But the Tourists claimed their machines melted clean—shedding low-energy photons and an enormous flood of particles that normal matter scarcely responded to. Hamid felt an urge to hysterical laughter; Slow Zone astronomers light years away might notice this someday, a wiggle on their neutrino scopes, one more datum for their flawed cosmologies.
There was lightning in the rainstorm now, flashes between the pallets and across the aisle—into the raw agrav units. The clothlike material jerked and rippled, individual units floating upwards. Magic carpets released by a genie.
Then giant hands clapped him, sound that was pain, and the rain was gone, replaced by a hot wet wind that swept around and up. Morning light shown through the steamy mist. The explosion had blasted open the roof. A rainbow arced across the ruins. Hamid was crawling now. Sticky wet ran down his face, dripped redly on the floor. The pallets bearing the fusion electrics had collapsed. Fifteen meters away, molten plastic slurried atop flowing metal.

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