28
Confederation Prison
“The Cage”
The Planet Omega
Jay hadn’t figured out why his sci-fi convention scenario had crashed, but he didn’t have time to sit down and debug the software—it wasn’t as if he didn’t have other things on his plate. He’d get back to it later, or maybe he’d just crank up something totally different and bag the convention imagery.
Sometimes, half the fun in finding information was in coming up with a new scenario for VR. Jay had to admit that he did more of that than was absolutely necessary, but he figured, if he couldn’t have fun, why bother? Any hack could use off-the-shelf software and filters—Jay liked to think of himself as at least a good craftsman, if not an artist. . . .
So it was that to hunt down a connection for the dead terrorist Stark, he had spent a couple hours building a scenario. Sure, it was easier to do these days, because a lot of the construction material was prepackaged, but that was kind of like buying a steak at the store instead of going out and hunting down your own cow. He had no problem with taking that shortcut; after all, it was the way you cooked the meat that made the difference. The proof was in the meal—nobody cared if you’d butchered the beef yourself or had somebody else do it.
Over the years, Jay had VR’d to many corners of the world, from Africa to Java, from Japan to Australia, China to Canada, you name it. Not only in the present, but throughout history. And he had built more than a few fantasy scenarios—and not just here on Earth. The solar system, the galaxy, the universe—shoot, the next universe over—Jay had explored all kinds of territory, real and imagined. Sometimes, the trick was more about how to keep it interesting than it was to find what he was after. That was part of the challenge.
This time, he had come up with one he thought was a hoot: He had gone to the planet Omega, in a stellar system far, far away, to the galaxy’s toughest prison. Ordinarily, this was a one-way ticket. Nobody was paroled, all the sentences were for life, and nobody had ever escaped—not and lived to tell of it.
While Richard Lovelace had it that stone walls did not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage, a joint with fifteen-meter-high walls painted with slick-ex too slippery to allow a fly to land, armed guards who’d just as soon shoot you as look at you, and set smack-dab in the middle of a pestilent, tropical swamp full of quicksand pits and man-eating critters that flew, ran, crawled, or slithered all over looking for a two-legged meal? Those made for a pretty good cage. Even if you could get out, the nearest port was a thousand kilometers away—how would you get there?
Jay, in his guise as a notorious drug smuggler sentenced to The Cage, as it was known, had arrived, beaten the crap out of the bully who had been sent to test him, and integrated himself into the population.
Stark was dead in this reality, too, but he’d been in the prison a while, and there were people who had known him. Jay needed to find them and get them to tell all. Which meant running down e-mails or postings or URLs or newsfeeds where somebody had mentioned Stark. At least enough so he could make a connection between Stark and whoever else might have been on the raids at the Army bases. Every new lead he found would need to be checked out.
He thought about calling Rachel and inviting her into his hunt, but since she was military and restricted to using their systems on this project, that would mean he’d have to go to the Pentagon and set it up there, and at the moment, the only place he wanted to deal with Rachel was in VR, not the Real World. Not that he was repelled by her, no, that was the problem. She was altogether too attractive. It was way too easy for him to visualize her with her hair spread out on a pillow. Something he had certainly thought about.
He wanted her, and he knew he wanted her, but he didn’t want to want her. He was married—happily—and in love with his wife. This thing with Rachel—no, it wasn’t a thing, not yet, and it wasn’t ever going to be. This would-be thing with Rachel was a temptation, a distraction, a fantasy—albeit a very pleasant fantasy. But no way was he going to let it be more than that.
Fortunately, they couldn’t hang you for thinking—not yet anyhow.
But she had rubbed his neck. And it had felt really good. . . .
Bag that, Jay—get back to work.
Jay drifted across the exercise area, looking at the yard monsters lifting weights. The temperature out here was well above body heat. Some of the iron-pumpers had arms as big around as Jay’s head, and looked as if they could pick themselves and all the weights on the bench next to them up with one hand. Jay was here to find information on a guy who’d lived in the same barracks as Stark when they’d gone through basic training. His contact-metaphor, whose name here was “Jethro,” wasn’t a weight lifter, but a boxer who was working the heavy bag.
High-tech as the prison was here in the future, there were still some old-style technologies extant, and a stuffed bag hung from a steel frame was among them.
Jethro was muscular in the way of a heavyweight boxer, and he wore bag gloves and shorts and boxing shoes. Here in the sticky heat, sweat beaded and ran down his torso to stain the waistband of his shorts, and more perspiration ran in rivulets along his legs to soak his socks. He had a few interesting scars on his body, along with a few tattoos. He hammered the bag, chuffing and breathing hard, grunting with effort. Jab, jab, cross. Jab, cross, hook! Overhand, jab, uppercut . . .
Jay stood by, not speaking, watching Jethro work. And maybe patting himself on the back a little at how good his sensory details were.
After a few minutes, the man paused to drink something colored a phosphorescent orange from a plastic bottle, and to wipe his face with a towel.
“What?” he said.
“We had a friend in common.”
“Yeah? Who?”
“Stark.”
Jethro shook his head. “Stark didn’t have any friends.”
“It was more of a work arrangement,” Jay said.
“So?”
“So I need to know something he knew.”
“Too bad. Why would I care?”
“I cut a deal with somebody. I find out this information he knew and pass it along.”
“And this buys you what?”
Here Jay had but one thing of any real value to sell. Everybody here was a lifer. The only way to leave The Cage was to die, get recycled, and flushed through narrow sewage pipes into the swamp. Hardly a glorious exit.
“A way out.”
“Sheeit.”
Jay shrugged.
Jethro wiped at his face again. “How?”
“A door is going to be left unlocked, a guard will be looking the other way. I’ll have a weapon. Not much chance I’ll survive the run to Port Tau, but at least it’s a shot. Better to die on my feet free and running than in here.”
Jethro considered that. “Say I buy this. How long is that door going to be unlocked? How long is the guard gonna be blind?”
Jay shrugged. “Could be long enough for two guys to pass.”
The boxer shook his head. “You know that’s how Stark got it? He was trying to run, got a needler bolt in the back.”
“I heard.”
“Been a while since Stark and I were tight.”
“I just got here,” Jay said. “More likely you can talk to people than I can.”
“What do I have to pay them with?”
“Two, three fast guys can run through an open door as quick as one, if they hurry.”
Jethro considered it. Nodded. “I can maybe talk to a couple people. Of course, if this is bunta-crap, you’re a dead man.”
“Of course. Whaddya got to lose?”
“That’s the prongin’ truth.” Jethro hung the towel over a steel strut, stepped back up to the bag. Hit it with a short right, hard. “I’ll find you if I get something.”
“I ain’t goin’ anywhere,” Jay said. “For a while, anyway.”
Jethro smiled at that one.
Partin’s Country Store
Near Damascus, Maryland
Lewis had picked the little country store because it had recently closed. She had happened across the place while out driving one day, feeling too cooped up after a long VR session and needing to move. The store was for sale, and there was a sign up over the front window saying so. Who owned it? Why had they shut it down? Where were they now? Those things didn’t really matter.
The place was not exactly the middle of nowhere—the sun didn’t come up between it and town—but it was an hour and some away from the District, half a mile from any other building, and the closest of those was a farmhouse off the road and mostly screened by trees. If she could get in and out fast, there wouldn’t be a problem. She rented a car, switched license plates with a vehicle parked in the back of an apartment complex that was the same make and model, and wore her standard disguise—baseball cap with her hair tucked under, sunglasses, dark T-shirt, jeans, running shoes, and a Windbreaker. Plus she had a new revolver, another S&W Chief .38 Special.
She didn’t want to be parked out in the boondocks long enough for anybody driving past to take notice. Her intent was to arrive five minutes before the meeting time, pull in, and wait for Carruth. As soon as he showed up, she would put two into his head before he could get out of the car. She hoped he had that big handgun with him, but if not, she would make sure there was something in the car to lead the state troopers who worked the case to his house. He’d rented that under a phony name, and she didn’t know if his driver’s license matched the address or not, but a wadded-up piece of paper with the street number and name on it dropped onto the floor would be enough, and they’d find it. They tended to search the cars of murdered folks very carefully. If Carruth still had the cop-killing gun, it would be on his hip, in the car, or stashed at his home somewhere.
She was tempted to run past his house and make sure there wasn’t anything she didn’t want the cops to find, but she didn’t think there would be. Carruth was pretty good about stuff like that.
Well, that’s what you thought about him before you found out about the two cops and that goddamned gun. . . .
So she drove slowly and carefully, and got to Partin’s Country Market four minutes before the appointed time. The sun was shining and it was cool, maybe forty degrees or so. Bracing . . .
Carruth arrived three minutes later.
She had been breathing slowly and deeply, but even so, her belly was roiling and her heart pumping faster than normal. It wasn’t every day you cold-bloodedly shot somebody to death. That thing in New Orleans hadn’t been planned, it had just happened, and yeah, she had been prepared, but she had not really expected, nor wanted, it to go down that way.
This was different. She was gonna smile at Carruth, a guy she had worked with for months, and knew, and then punch holes in his skull, bam-bam. Yeah, it had to be done, but still, it made for a dry mouth and fluttery bowels. She took a deep breath. Get to it, sister.
As she stepped out of her rented car, she looked up to see a state police patrol cruiser coming along the country road. And slowing down.
She went cold, but let none of her reactions show.
Unless she was willing to kill a state cop, Carruth was going to live to see another day.
She considered it.
Carruth was armed and he was good with a gun. She didn’t know how good the trooper might be. If she pulled her piece and blasted Carruth, the cop might be a danger before she could do him. Carruth certainly would be if she shot the cop first, though he would hesitate, trying to figure what she was doing, and she could nail him while he was trying to work it out. . . .
No. She didn’t need any complications—somebody might spot the dead police officer before she was out of range, and they would certainly throw up roadblocks every which way. Maybe he had already called in their license plates. Dead police officers were a major glitch, to be avoided if at all possible. She could screw up Jay Gridley’s search for a little while longer, and take care of Carruth later.
“Follow my lead,” she said to Carruth as the trooper pulled into the lot. “We’re thinking about buying this place,” she said.
The gravel crunched under the trooper’s tires. The cop eased closer and rolled his window down. “You folks okay?”
Carruth stepped of his car with a notepad. He looked at the for-sale sign and began writing on the pad. He smiled at the trooper and raised a hand in greeting.
“Yes, sir,” Lewis said. “My friend and I came out to look at the store. We heard it was for sale.”
“You live around here?”
“No, in the District. But we’re tired of the city,” she said. “And we’re thinking maybe about getting married and starting a business away from all the noise and traffic.”
The cop, who was maybe twenty-five, smiled. “Really nice country.”
“It is. We figured we’d get the Realtor’s number and see if we can set up a meeting.”
She smiled at the trooper, who grinned back. “Shame you had to come in two cars.”
Cops never just took anything at face value, the good ones. She leaned down closer to the cop. “My friend and I, we’re, uh, married to . . . other people right now. We’re going to, uh, take care of that, but we kind of don’t want to be seen together just yet.”
“Ah. I understand.”
She nodded. Give them a story they like, they’ll buy it.
“Well, you all have a nice day.”
Carruth turned and ambled over to where Lewis stood. He put his arm around her and smiled at the trooper. Pressed the tips of his fingers against her breast so the cop could see that.
The trooper pulled out of the lot and drove slowly away.
“Bet he turns into a driveway a mile down the road and waits to see what we are going to do,” Carruth said.
“If you don’t get your hand off my boob, he’s going to see me kick you in the balls.”
Carruth laughed. He moved his hand away. “I had to help sell it, didn’t I?”
“We need to leave,” she said.
“Why? We can talk for a couple minutes, walk around the place. Even if the cop can see us, it’s not like we’re trying to break into the place. We can hold hands, make out, give him something to tell the boys back at the station.” He grinned.
“Forget it.”
She hadn’t planned on having to lay out another base incursion, since she’d expected he’d be dead by now. She didn’t have anything to tell him. A mistake. “No, we’ll do it later. I’ll call and set it up.”
“Why’d you want to meet way the hell out here anyway?”
“I wanted a quiet drive in the country. What do you care?”
He shrugged. “I don’t. My last trip to the country involved shooting down a helicopter full of armed dweebos—not a real peaceful memory.”
“Go. I’ll call.”
He shrugged again and ambled to his car.
Well—damn. This certainly hadn’t gone the way she’d visualized it. A reminder that RW was messier than VR. She needed to keep that in mind. If that trooper had chosen to play it differently, maybe been in a bad mood and needing to feel powerful, if he’d wanted to see ID, maybe decided he needed to pat them down, it would have really been a bad scene. She supposed she ought to consider herself lucky it hadn’t gone that way. Carruth killing cops was why they were here—they didn’t need another dead one calling attention their way.
She climbed back into her car and started the engine.
As she did, she had a sudden inspiration. A way to get rid of Carruth without doing it herself. She smiled. It was perfect. She should have thought of it before.
Better late than never.