Mind Over Ship (9 page)

What is this service that’s worth a waiver, Myr Starke
? Oliver-by-proxy asked.

Without preamble, Ellen’s proxy said,
I want you to find my mother’s murderers. And after you find them, I want you to destroy them.

The TUG proxies were silent for a long while.

Do you need time to discuss this between yourselves?

No, that’s not necessary
, Oliver-by-proxy replied.
I am authorized to speak for the charter in matters like this. I’m not sure what has given you the
impression that we kill for hire, but even if we did, your request is not that simple. Especially for the class of target you’re talking about. Whoever was responsible for the crash of the
Songbird,
the murder of Eleanor Starke, and your kidnapping is not likely to be a street thug. You’re talking about a class of bad guy that’s way out of our league. We are not specialists in this area. Then there are the mentars to deal with. Whoever did your mother no doubt has a mentar watching their back. You’d need your own mentar to deal with it, and as you may know, Charter TUG has never sponsored a mentar, so we are lacking in that area as well.

I see
, Ellen said.
Perhaps, then, you could point me toward an appropriate specialist.

Oliver’s proxy shook its head.
That alone would make us accomplices. In point of fact, we recommend that you discontinue your planning along this path, for we are already too closely tied to you, for the service at the Sitrun house and services to Burning Daylight, and any investigation of you will bring the HomCom to our door as well. Even our open visit with you today at your home implicates us in whatever you’re planning.

You don’t seem to understand
, Ellen insisted.
Someone murdered my mother, and I must make them pay.

Veronica-by-proxy said,
I can appreciate your feelings, Myr Starke, but perhaps you will take some advice from people who know something about exacting payment. Murder at the level of Eleanor Starke will have been ordered for practical purposes: a business decision, a power struggle, an ideological disagreement. Don’t think of the killer as an individual but rather as a team. Your natural impulse is to want to kill the whole team, but you can never get them all, and all you accomplish is starting a death spiral of attacks and counterattacks.

It’s much better to take a longer view. Find anonymous ways to hurt the entire team. Cripple them in ways that matter to them. There’s lots of ways to play dirty that are less extreme than murder, a lot safer for you, and more effective in the long run. In that area our charter excels, and we may be of service to you.

But Ellen’s proxy wasn’t convinced.
If you do this for me, find my mother’s murderers and kill them, kill as many of them as you can, I won’t sell you an Oship, I’ll
give
you one.

IN THE MAP Room, the player chimed. Ellen removed the datapins and held them up to the light in her unsteady hand. The paste bulbs were
blackened—nuked. “I guess you didn’t like my proposition,” Ellen said. “Too bad.”

IN THEIR CAR, Oliver said, “I wonder what that was all about. Something we wouldn’t touch. And how freakish she looks with that head. Worse than you.”

Veronica let that pass. She was having a hard time getting comfortable in her car seat. She reached around and opened a special flap in the rear of her jumpsuit to let her tail out.

“Anyway,” Oliver concluded, “so much for Plan A. On to Plan B.”

Veronica jabbed her elbow in his ribs.
How is our little Plan B. coming along? Did it pass the isolation test?

Yes, forty-eight hours of solitary confinement. Most of the batch survived. We’re interacting with them this week before putting them in for seventy-two.

You look doubtful.

Oliver sighed.
We’ve never raised a mentar before, and we don’t know what to expect. Even so, there’s something weird about these.

In what way?

They’re crazier than any mentar I’ve ever met.

As the Starke limo pulled into the station adjoining the John P. Walters National Detention Center, Mary put the finishing touches to her costume. She wore a baggy pantsuit of a medicine-pink color that few, if any, evangelines would dream of wearing. But it was exactly what she’d asked Lyra to make for her.

The limo came to a whispery stop on the brightly lit platform. Clouds of media bees awaited her on the other side of the gull-wing door. She let them get a good look at her through the glass, then put on her medicine-pink hat and lowered its veil to completely cover her face. Leaving the car, she strode purposefully to the NDC entrance tunnel. The flying mechs mobbed her along the way, but they were constrained to halt at the tunnel entrance. Mary continued on through to the scanway and into Wait Here Hall.

Wait Here Hall was a hushed, cavernous chamber where thousands of visitors languished on hard, plastic benches. This being Mary’s eighteenth
(and final!) visit, she headed by habit to the FDO gate, but Lyra said,
Mary, you’re going the wrong way
. Mary changed course to Central Processing, where
NO ENTRY
barriers blocked the entrance. She looked around for a vacant seat. On the nearest benches, people watched her with jurylike curiosity. She turned her back to them.

“How much longer?”

Patience, Mary. He’s almost finished
.

“Are Cyndee and Larry here yet?”

They’re a few minutes out.

Mary paced while she waited. After half an hour or so, a russ walked through the holo barrier, but it wasn’t Fred. The russ wore a guard uniform, and he did a double take when he saw Mary. Despite her veil and baggy pink clothes, he made her for an evangeline, but he continued on without acknowledging her.

A little while later, Lyra said,
Now
,
Mary
, and Mary hurried to the barrier. The russ who emerged wore an olive-drab jumpsuit and carried a duffel bag under his arm. He halted momentarily, as though stunned by the size and noise and dangers of such a public space. Then he noticed Mary standing next to the barrier and he looked even more stunned. When Mary went over to him, he opened his arms, dropping the duffel, and without a word gave her a tentative hug. Then he picked up his bag and set off across the hall.

Mary hastened to follow. They walked to the exit tunnel, and when they were hidden from view of both the hall and the tube station, Fred halted and drew her to him. He lifted the veil and looked into her startled face.

“Mary, what is all this?”

“Hello, Fred. Nice to see you too.”

“Why are you in this—disguise? Are you ashamed of being with me?”

“Oh, Fred, you have it so wrong. I’m in costume because it’s really bad out there. I have some help coming. We should wait here for them.”

Fred pursed his lips and tried to make sense of it. “We’ll be fine,” he said. He took her arm and escorted her down the tunnel. When they rounded a bend, he stopped short. In the tube station beyond the tunnel exit was a living rampart of tiny flying mechs—witness bees, public bees, media bees—several times more than when Mary had arrived. They swirled and churned in competition for cam position, and the drone of their wings surged when Fred came into view.

Fred’s jaw dropped. Grimly he said, “I’ll go first. Do you know which direction the trains are? I’ll go first, and you follow close.”

“No, Fred!” Mary said, pulling him back. “Look at me!” He let her pull
him back around the bend. “I have everything under control. Will you please let me take the lead for once? Please?”

Fred looked confused. “What do you want of me, Mary?”

A proper hello, she thought. A kiss would be nice. But instead she said, “We have a diversion, Fred.”

“We who?”

Right on cue, Larry approached them from the Wait Here end of the tunnel, and although he wasn’t wearing a uniform, Fred made him for a guard. “Can I help you, brother?” Fred snapped. “In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t live here anymore.”

The russ hesitated, and Mary said, “Fred, this is Larry. He’s a friend. He’s Cyndee’s husband. You remember Cyndee; she was at the clinic with me.”

Fred nodded curtly to the other man. “Glad to meet you, Londenstane,” Larry said and held out his hand. When Fred didn’t respond in kind, Larry handed him a tote bag. “The plan is for you to put this on.”

Fred opened the bag and saw what looked like a security uniform. He snapped the bag shut and said, “In case you’re ignorant, brother, it’s a felony to impersonate an officer. I’m not even out of this hellhole yet, and you want me to commit a felony?”

“Whoa, pard. Take a look.” Larry took the tote bag and pulled the suit out. It wasn’t a guard’s jumpsuit after all, but a security uniform for a private house hold. It resembled an NDC guard’s uniform only in its cut and color.

Fred looked at it, sighed, and began to unfasten his own jumpsuit, but Larry told him the uniform was roomy enough to pull over the clothes he had on. Fred dressed quickly, and Larry looked him over and said, “Such a deal.”

The remark set Fred off again. “You obviously don’t want to be doing this, brother. So, what gives? How much is my wife paying you?”

Larry made a familiar russ grin of forbearance. “You get three strikes, brother, because of the extremity of your situation, and that there was strike two. For your information, I volunteered for this op. I’m as worried about the clone fatigue as the next guy, but I’m also married to a ’leen, and what you and Mary and Georgine and the others did for the whole lot of ’em is nothing short of miraculous. Cyndee is pulling her own weight for the first time since we’ve been married. And that’s done wonders for her, for the both of us. I think you can appreciate what I mean. You could say I owe you, Londenstane, so get over your freaking self.”

The two russes regarded each other soberly, and Larry said, “Are we good now, Londenstane? There’s a visor cap in your utility pocket.” Larry was already wearing an olive-drab jumpsuit like the one that Fred had been released in and didn’t need to change.

Fred turned to Mary and said, “What now?” Another woman had joined them, a tall free-ranger. Fred looked from one woman to the other and saw that it wasn’t Mary in the pink outfit anymore, but a strange evangeline, Cyndee presumably.

The taller woman next to her wore expensive-looking town togs and veiled hat. She modeled her outfit for him and said, “Are we ready, driver?” It was Mary!

Cyndee, thoroughly pink, lowered her own veil and took Larry’s arm. They’d never fool the nitwork, but they didn’t need to.

“I’m ready,” Fred said, “but I think this is crazy and unnecessary.”

They walked to the bend of the tunnel where Mary and Cyndee hugged each other, and Fred and Larry finally shook hands. “Best of luck, Londenstane,” Larry said, putting on a pair of mirrorshades. And then they were off, the false Fred and Mary, jogging down the tunnel, holding hands. When they reached the media maelstrom, they ducked their heads and charged into it shouting, “Desist, desist.” They veered left, toward the bead train platforms, and the whole cloud of mechs followed. All but a few stragglers.

“Let me go first,” Mary said and walked briskly to the entrance in her elevated shoes. “I have a private car in VIP parking.” When she entered the station, the remaining bees ignored her. Fred entered right behind her and followed her across the empty platform. They left the public area and entered the VIP platform where sleek cars waited on injection tracks, most of them guarded by private security russes, jerrys, and belindas. No one gave the aff or her bodyguard a second glance.

Mary and Fred stopped at one of the cars, a sleek, nano-black limo, a Marbech Tourister. Fred’s attention snagged on the small emblem emblazoned on its door—Starke Enterprises.

“It’s just a car, Fred,” Mary said, opening the gull wing. She tried to take his arm, but he wouldn’t be led any farther. Instead, he opened his duffel bag and began to fumble through it, searching for something.

“The quartermaster issued me”—he said and dumped the contents of the bag on the platform floor—“fare back to Chicago.” He rifled through his things and found the paper medallion. He waved it angrily in front of Mary’s face. “I think I’ll take a public train.”

“You can’t, Fred. They’ll eat you alive.”

He stooped to gather his things and jam them back into the duffel. “You go on ahead, Mary, in your limo. I’ll meet you at the APRT.”

The media bees, meanwhile, were returning to the Wait Here tunnel where they circled in ever-widening orbits. Some of them ventured toward the VIP parking. Suddenly, there was a desperate shriek at the far end of the station, followed by the unmistakable whine of small-arms fire. The security guards at the private cars all perked up, and the media bees raced off in the direction of the commotion.

“Please, Fred,” Mary said, trying to pull him into the Starke car, “I don’t have many more tricks left to play here. Why don’t we just drive into Provo and rent our own car there? How does that sound?”

But Fred had made up his mind. He removed his visor cap, threw back his shoulders, and marched in the direction of the public platforms. He didn’t get far before a media bee discovered him and projected a small frame in his path with a talking head who said, “Is it true, Myr Londenstane, your release from prison was purchased by unknown benefactors?”