The VMR Theory (v1.1) (14 page)

“Harry, Ken has told me so much about you,” Trixie said, batting her eyes. Muffy gave her a look of absolute hostility.

I looked around nervously as Catarina began to stir. “I don’t mean to rush everyone, but can we go in?”

We tipped the cops who waved us through, and after Muffy disabled the alarms, we entered the embassy through the window to my room. I kept expecting to see the embassy security detail waiting for us with a bill for damages.

Catarina took charge. “We might as well call it a night. Ken, why don’t you and Harry keep an eye on Dr. Blok. I’ll take Muffy and Trixie with me. We’ll tackle Ambassador Meisenhelder in the morning after he’s had his coffee.”

Harry and I fixed the window, and then we rolled to see who got the bed. Unfortunately, we used Harry’s dice, which meant that Blok got the sofa and I got what the littlest piggy got. After I switched off the lights and tried to fall asleep, I was awakened by a tug on my blanket.

“Mr. MacKay!” Blok gave my blanket another pull. “Are you asleep?”

“No.” The problem with suffering fools gladly is that they don’t suffer nearly as much as you do.

“You must know—t’is female who calls herself Muffy! She is a dangerous radical who wishes to upset tee ordering of society!”

“Thanks. See you in the morning.”

He gave me a soulful look. “Oh, what will become of me!”

“Cheer up. Lydia will find you a new career.”

“You t’ink so?”

“Sure. It will probably be the same one she offered me, which is painting those little yellow lines down the center of busy freeways.”

“I feel better.”

“Great. I’m glad one of us does. Good night.”

I should mention that Harry snores.

Around six Catarina came by to collect us. Muffy had a basket of moderately active invertebrates to feed Blok and Trixie; the rest of us headed for the embassy dining room. I whispered to Catarina, “Did you tell Harry that Muffy is a radical feminist?”

She shook her head. “Ignorance is a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone.”

The embassy dining room was mostly empty when we arrived. Harry went for the sausage and powdered eggs. Catarina and I opted for cereal of dubious provenance— “Bran X,” as Catarina dubbed it—and mugs of cocoa, chocolate being one of the four food groups.

A few tables over, a crew-cut woman from Feline Liberation Front noticed us. I saw her push aside her breakfast salad and grab a chubby guy from the Save the Gerbils Foundation so hard that he almost spilled his mineral water.

“Are your ears burning?” Catarina asked me.

“I’ll handle this,” Harry sniffed.

The woman marched over to our table, narrowing her closely spaced eyes. “I’m Wild. Felicia Wild of the PCJE. I’m looking for a man named Ken MacKay.” Harry stood. “Hey, babe, you’re wasting your time. He’s already got a girlfriend. My name’s Harry.”

One of the buttons Wild was wearing read “Friends Don’t Let Friends Eat Meat.” She stared at Harry’s plate, where a greasy sausage was dripping on the end of the fork we made him use. “I’d rather fornicate with a goat than eat the meat of a slaughtered, defenseless animal.”

I cringed.

Harry looked down at his plate and back again. “I didn’t know I got a choice, today. Your place or mine?” The woman’s mouth and chest moved, but no sound came out. She had that stricken look you sometimes see on the faces of small animals crossing against traffic.

“I’ll bring the oil,” Harry offered.

The cat lady whimpered and ran.

Harry sat back down, speared his sausage, and munched on it enthusiastically. “You know, I bet I could really get a rise out of her if I came back tomorrow, but then I’d miss the bomb.”

I almost choked on my cocoa. “What bomb?” Catarina asked in a very faint voice.

“What was it we were going to blow up? Oh, yeah, at the capitol building. You know, with the parliament inside?”

I whispered a quick prayer. “Uh, Harry, was it a— teeny-weeny little bomb, or a big bomb?”

“Oh, a
big
one.” Harry used the sugar bowl to demonstrate. “A dust initiator. You remember when Prince Adolf was shooting missiles at the
Scupper
and you tried to touch off a cloud of fertilizer?”

“Well, yes. You only made me tell you the story forty-seven times.”

“When I told all of Muffy’s little friends about it, they got real excited.”

I stared at Harry. “Oh, no.”

To initiate a dust explosion, you mix powdered TNT with an incendiary—preferably three parts powdered ferric oxide to two parts powdered aluminum or magnesium—and use it to touch off a “surround,” which is a fine powder or volatilized gasoline evenly distributed in the air. A kilo of explosive and forty kilos of surround is good for about thirteen hundred cubic meters of building, which makes it a nice way to get a big bang out of a limited amount of explosive.

“We pumped about half a ton of fertilizer into the building and used the air conditioners to swirl it around,” Harry said complacently. “That was what we needed the demo charges from the ship for. Oh, yeah, Muffy wanted me to thank you, Ken. You know, we couldn’t have done it without you.”

Harry finished mopping up his eggs and pushed his plate away. He looked at us with concern. “Are you all right, Ken? You’re looking kind of pale—I mean, even more pale than usual. In fact, you and Catarina are both looking paler than usual.”

Catarina purred, “Ken, we need to talk.”

“Harry,” I interjected, “are you saying the guards just let you drive right up to the capital and pour in a truckload of fertilizer?”

Harry looked perplexed. “Hey, they’re civil servants. They were on their coffee break. Union rules.”

“Didn’t anybody ask why you were pumping a half ton of manure into the building?”

Harry lifted his hand to his forehead. “Not that I remember. Well, one guy said that pumping manure into the capital was redundant, but I think he was making a joke.”

“Harry,” I said desperately, “I know you’re trying to help Muffy with her revolution, but don’t you think that this might annoy people?”

He scratched his head. “You know, I asked Muffy about that, and she said that they did a telephone survey, and sixty-six percent of the people surveyed volunteered to push the plunger.”

Catarina shook her head sadly. “Harry, when is the explosion timed to go off?”

“Tomorrow morning. Muffy says that the legislature has a ceremonial opening session where the legislators put on fancy robes and fling coins to the crowd while the crowd flings back road apples. We timed it so that the building blows up right when they open the doors.” Catarina stared up at the ceiling. “You do know that commercial explosives have little colored bits of plastic mixed in with the inert material so that people can identify the batch and lot number from the residue.”

Harry appeared to digest this bit of information. “Is this a problem?”

“Harry, she’s saying that after the explosion, the Macdonalds are going to know that the demo charges came off our ship,” I explained.

Harry’s brow furrowed in deep concentration. “Well, okay, but is this a problem?”

“It means that we’ll have an awful lot of explaining to do,” Catarina said, looking at me. “By linking us to the blast, the Macdonalds could use it to squeeze concessions out of the Confederation which would allow them to build up their warfleet. Alternatively, if they think they’re ready to start a war, they would be hard-pressed to find a better casus belli.”

“Is that some kind of spaghetti dish?” Harry inquired.

I looked at Catarina. “I guess maybe we don’t want to talk to the ambassador just now.”

“Maybe not.” She pulled the sunglasses off her face, stuck one of the earpieces in her mouth, and smiled, a real jet job. “Ken, it’s a little late to ask, but why did you let Harry have demo charges?”

“I didn’t actually think the Macdonalds would let him have them.”

She began examining her fingernails. “Ken?”

“Yes, I know. It is inappropriate to use mass extermination to settle petty grievances. Are you mad at me?”

“That would be an understatement.”

Harry looked at each of us in turn. “Is something wrong?”

Catarina sighed. “Harry, we’re going to have pull out those demo charges and stop the explosion.”

“Aw, dam!” Harry lightly tapped his fist against the table to express his feelings, leaving behind a small dent.

I winced. “Couldn’t we just make an anonymous phone call and tell them about the bomb?”

“The only thing easier to trace than the residue from the charges would be the serial numbers. Harry, do you know where the charges are planted?”

“No, they said that I was too conspicuous to take along. Muffy knows.” He scratched his head. “She said that they were going to booby-trap the charges to keep anyone from tampering with them. Is that a problem?”

“It’s a problem,” Catarina agreed. “Ken, do you know anything about defusing bombs?”

“I was about to ask you the same question.”

She shrugged. “We’d better plan on leaving as soon as it gets dark. I’ll see if there’s an ordnance expert on the staff here who is willing to come along without making it a matter of official record. Harry, I need you to break the news to Muffy and get her to help.”

“She had her heart set on this,” Harry observed sadly. Mentioning the word “heart” around Catarina is like waving a red cape, but she turned the corner of her mouth down with barely a glimmer of her usual enthusiasm. “I wish the two of you had nipped this in the blood, but I suppose into everyone’s life, a little vein must fall.”

“She’s real upset,” Harry noted somberly. “Oops! Don’t look now.”

Bobby Stemm advanced into the room like Frank Clanton walking into the O.K. Corral. He pointed one finger menacingly. “You!”

I looked around.

“MacKay! What are you doing here?!”

I shrugged. “There’s this thing called breakfast.”

“Where did you come from? How did you get in here?”

Catarina said in a stage whisper, “I’ll explain doors if you’ll tell him about the birds and the bees.”

Accurately reading the expression on her face, Bobby stepped back a pace.

“Shall, we continue this discussion in your office?” she said politely.

Leaving Harry behind to finish breakfast, we marched off to Bobby’s office. As soon as we got inside, Catarina slammed the door shut. “Bobby, to put this in concrete terms, let me be the first to assure you that if the ambassador boots us and bollixes up our mission, Admiral Crenshaw is going to ensure that your next duty station is cold and lonely.”

Bobby considered this. He began banging his head on his desk. “My career is already in ruins. Aren’t the two of you satisfied?”

Catarina and I looked at each other. “No.”

“It’s not fair,” he sobbed.

Catarina sniffed the air cautiously. “What’s that I smell?”

Bobby sat bolt upright. “You can’t smell anything in here. It’s impossible. I mean, there’s nothing in here to smell. Nothing!” He looked at us and mopped his brow nervously. “Obviously, it’s all a figment of your imagination. Would you like a cup of tea? That’s it—I could pour you a nice cup of tea!”

Catarina smiled slowly. “You know, Bobby, somehow I think that for you, the ‘pour tea’ is over.” She picked up his phone. “Hello, Trixie? Do you mind coming down to room 132?” She stopped smiling when she put the phone down.

Stemm started to stand up. “Now you wait just one minute here!”

Catarina leaned across his desk. “Bobby, Ken has had a very bad week, what with the shadur and everything. If you don’t sit down and behave yourself, I’m going to turn him loose.”

I saw his hand creep toward one of the drawers. Without thinking, I grabbed his wrist. Catarina studied his face, then walked around the desk and opened the drawer he had been reaching for. She pulled out a leather pouch and dumped it out on the desk. There was a pistol and four packs of cigarettes inside. “An addict. I might have known.”

Bobby turned pale.

Trixie stuck her head in the door.

“Trixie, this is Lieutenant Commander Stemm. Would you please stand behind him? All right, Bobby, where did you get the cancer sticks?”

Stemm started to say, “I confiscated them as evidence—”

Trixie coughed and shook her head.

Catarina smiled. “Trixie reads minds, Bobby. Want to try again?”

Trixie rested her elbows on his shoulder. “You may call me Xuexue if you like.”

“Not you,” Bobby gasped.

“Would you like to tell us who told you about her?” Catarina asked. When Bobby stood mute, she exploded. “Last chance, Bobby. This is serious. If you don’t come clean, I guarantee Lydia is going to fry you up one slice at a time. Want to try the truth for a change?”

Stemm nodded, tears welling up in his eyes.

“You’re a smoker, aren’t you?”

Stemm buried his head in his hands and began weeping. “Yes, it’s true. I’m hooked.”

“How long?”

“Two, three years now.”

Trixie stroked his back sympathetically.

“I’ve tried to quit. Lord knows how many times I’ve tried. I just can’t help myself.”

Despite my dislike for Stemm, I felt a touch of compassion for him. I actually smoked part of a cigar once. Even though I didn’t inhale, I could dimly grasp how nicotine craving could claw its way into a man’s soul.

“I knew it would cost me my commission if it ever came out,” Bobby sobbed, “but I just couldn’t help myself.”

Catarina grilled him remorselessly. “The Macdonalds found out you were a junkie, didn’t they?”

“Yes, the Special Secret Police, somehow they knew. They threatened to expose me unless I agreed to cooperate,” Bobby said brokenly. “They never trusted me completely.”

I nodded sympathetically. “I wouldn’t, either.”

“Someone must have outed me,” he sniveled.

“Who knew you were a smoker? Who was your connection?” Catarina asked, her voice hardening.

Stemm glanced around the room as if seeking a means of escape.

Catarina looked him straight in the eye. “Bobby, are you connected with SLO?”

“Me? SLO? Part of the Smokers’ Liberation Organization? Ha-ha! What ever gave you that crazy idea?” Stemm said nervously.