3rd World Products, Book 16 (38 page)

White put on a heavy coat and picked up his drink. He downed it in two swallows and set the glass down, took a deep breath, and headed for the door. Reaching through a fake pocket, he loosened the gun in its holster, then replaced it.
 

Out of the room, down the hall to an elevator. Out of the building to the street and westward. Setting the probe to watch for course changes, I scouted ahead and found an ATM built into a stone alcove matching the front of a bank building. Good enough for use as a bullet backstop and in range of the bank’s outside cameras.
 

Manifesting my sim around the corner, I copied the clothing of a passing man to it and made the sim walk to and enter the ATM alcove as Brian White approached.
 

He was ten feet from the sim when I said, “Hi, Brian.”
 

White stopped cold and glanced around, spotted the sim in the alcove, and glanced around again.
 

Reaching into the sim’s coat pocket and pointing a finger at White as if it were a gun, I said, “I decided I can’t trust the cops to get you, so I decided to deal with you myself.”
 

White snapped, “Fuck you. I shot you nine times and you disappeared. I may be going nuts, but I know you aren’t real.”
 

“Think so, huh? Tell you what, watch this guy and see if you still think so.”
 

Lowering my fake gun, I noddingly indicated an approaching man who was reading a paper as he walked. White watched him look up, see my sim, and go to the next ATM. White’s eyes widened slightly.
 

“Oh, yeah,” I chuckled with a grin, “I’m
definitely
real, Brian. You got any last words?”
 

Apparently not. The front of White’s coat erupted with three quick shots. Bullets punched through my sim and into the ATM behind it. People screamed, scattered, and hid behind cars as I gave White the finger. He pulled the gun out of his coat to aim it properly, then fired twice at my face.
 

I let the sim drop to its knees and topple forward to land face down on the sidewalk. White glanced around and hurried away. Crossing the street among cars stopped for a light, he headed due west across a commons.
 

Making the sim groan and struggle to its hands and knees, then to its feet, I made it stagger to the corner, then I had it turn east. When it was out of bank camera range, I made it fall into the street between parked cars and vanish.
 

My probes recorded White’s attempt to escape. They also recorded his being surrounded by
cops in a city park. When he tried to avoid cops ahead, two cops tackled him from behind.
 

White screamed when he went down hard. One of the cops took White’s gun while the other cuffed his left arm and reached for his right arm. White screamed again as his right arm bent oddly and the cop let go of it. The other cop latched onto White’s upper arm as they sat there.
 

More cops had swarmed in while they wrestled White to the ground. Someone shortly brought in two medics and White was escorted to an ambulance. He was searched, then two cops got in with him and off they went.
 

Meanwhile a crime scene had been established at the ATM and a search was underway for the man who’d been White’s target. Cops followed his trail on the sidewalk in varying degrees of wonderment about oddities.
 

Lack of blood, for instance. There was doubt the man had been hit at all and speculation that he might have been wearing body armor under his coat. One woman even said the man had simply vanished between two cars.
 

I had a probe tap copies of the footage from the two wall cameras and the ATM camera, then bundled everything together and sent it to Linda. Half an hour later, Linda pinged me.
 

Saluting the screen I put up, I bellowed, “Yes, Fearless Leader! Hope you enjoyed the show, ma’am!”
 

Linda chuckled and waved a little return salute at me, then said, “Yes, I did. Very much. The German cops found their ancient accident report in White’s coat and were very curious about it. They’ve already pulled his phone records and impounded his laptop. I’ve placed a request for a copy of that report, so they’ll ask me why I want it. I’ll reveal my suspicions about Bryce or Brian being the cause of the crash, of course. Can you think of any unexplainable loose ends, Ed?”
 

“Only my sim vanishing between cars. Once they convince themselves he was wearing armor, they’ll assume he got away in one piece.”
 

“A woman saw him vanish and made a statement.”
 

“Yeah, but eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable. Unless a herd of people say the same thing, she’ll be ignored.”
 

“And if they do?”
 

“Unlikely. She was the only jaywalker on the street.”
 

Linda nodded. “Okay. I spoke to Will. Now I’ll call back and tell him to stand down.”
 

“Oh, I dunno. Why not fly him and Connie over there regarding the crash report? Will can certify stuff and visit White. Maybe scare some more crap out of him.”
 

She chuckled, “I’ll take that under advisement. Anything else to report?”
 

“Only that I still suffer pangs of loss and heartache when I think of you with that brass-bound sailor.” I sighed, “But on the other hand, he does seem to make you reasonably happy, so tell him I said hi.”
 

“Will do. Thanks, Ed. Later.”
 

“Bye, Linda.”
 

She dropped the link. I sat on my board a thousand feet above Ocala, wondering what to do with the day and what to do about Tanya. I had no doubt Marie would recover well, if not fully. How would she handle the news about Tanya and me? Probably not well at all. Not at first, anyway.
 

Then there’d be all the fuss and bother about Marie’s miraculous recovery. I didn’t really want to be a part of that, but I couldn’t see a way around it. Yet. Maybe it was time to visit the asteroid station for a while? Nah. Sara would honor a subpoena. Might be best to just plead the fifth and keep quiet.
 

Then it occurred to me that I could move aboard the flitter and use probes to check my mail and such. Pay bills remotely. Hell, I could lock everything I cared about to any degree in one room and rent the house to someone.
 

But those were last resorts. I wanted every possible minute with warm and willing Tanya and I couldn’t see her living aboard the flitter. She’d go nuts in less than a month. Hm. Save that as a last resort, too, just in case she turned out to be something other than a blessing later.
 

My implant pinged with Wallace’s ‘
Anchors Aweigh
‘ ringtone and I answered it with, “Hi.
Did you get my message?”
 

His gaze turned questioning. “What message?”
 

“I told Linda to say hi for me.”
 

“You talked to Linda?”
 

“Boy, you’re really out of things, Cap. Oh, wait! It’s Rear Admiral Wallace now. What does a Rear Admiral do, anyway?”
 

“All kinds of stuff. Someone sent me something you ought to see, Ed.”
 

He expanded an icon. It was a 1.5-second video of Tanya and me going at it on the flitter. I sent a copy of it to my core for future reference.
 

I said, “Well, damn. I don’t really care, but she would. What have you done about it?”
 

“Two reprimands and fines, confiscation of their private telephones and electronics, and a complete and thorough search of every electronic device on base for more copies.”
 

I almost pointed out that ‘complete’ and ‘thorough’ meant essentially the same thing, but didn’t. Instead, I pointed at the screen and said, “Thanks, but you missed one,” and my core removed it from his pad. I also had my core run its own ‘complete and thorough’ search for more. It found two copies; one on Angie’s pad and one in a backup.
 

Wallace gave me a droll look and said, “I presume you’re running your own search. At any rate, I believe that problem is over. The woman in the video. She’s what..? Thirty?”
 

“Thirty-five, which is old enough in most states. Besides, I figure it’ll end on its own in a while.”
 

“And in the meantime you’ll pull all you can out of it?”
 

“Yup. You have a problem with that?”
 

Wallace frumped, “Actually, yes. I do.”
 

“Then please keep it to yourself. We’re adults and I have reason to believe she’s doing the same thing.”
 

“Oh? What’s she trying to get from you?”
 

“At this point, more of the same. All she can, but not in a material sense.” Straightening my legs to let them dangle over the board, I sipped coffee and said, “Cap, we’re just in heat. That never lasts more than a few months. If there isn’t more to go on then, we’ll likely move on. That’s always how it works.”
 

Looking generally skeptical, he sat back and replied, “Uh, huh. I guess we’ll see, won’t we?”
 

“Yup. Anything else on your mind today?”
 

“No, that was it and I have some things to do here.”
 

“Well, thanks for what you already did. If you meet Tanya, you’ll probably like her.”
 

“You’re welcome. Later, Ed.”
 

With a small salute, I said, “Later, Mr. Rear Admiral, sir.”
 

He grinned and returned the salute, then tapped off the link. I sent a probe to Cap’s office because I knew him and he knew me. He’d have expected me to zap his copy of the video and run a further search.
 

Sure enough, he pulled a printout of one frame from the video from under his desk blotter. It was a good, clear picture. After studying it for a few moments, he fed it to the shredder by his desk and sat back sipping his coffee.
 

I gave some thought to what we’d done about Marie. In the most technical sense, no US or treaty laws had been broken. No Robodoc or AI had treated her on prohibited soil. When Marie’s injuries healed, there’d be some fuss, but I didn’t think they could make the kind of case they wanted.
 

That didn’t mean they couldn’t give Tanya and me a hard time for practicing medicine without a license, but I could deal with that. I could dig up too much dirt on people who’d want to make the whole mess go away.
 

Might be they’d try to put a political case together based on Marie and others, which would bring Steph and her lawyer buddies into the fray. That would probably be more to their liking anyway.
 

Chapter Twenty-four
 

I checked email and worked on my latest book until almost noon, then I sent a ping to Tanya.
 

She answered with, “I was just thinking about you.”
 

“Same here. Can you pry away for lunch?”
 

“No, I’m swamped. Ellie’s bringing me back a salad. Hey, you let me see through this link once. How can I do that?”
 

I tried to explain and didn’t really feel I’d succeeded, but suddenly I could see her desk and the room beyond it. A young woman came in and set a folder on several others, then said, “This should be the last of them. The audit’s on Thursday.”
 

As the woman walked away, I kept my gaze on the folder. If I’d watched her leave, my eyes would have been on her legs and Tanya would have noticed if I’d liked what I saw. Possibly not a big thing and easily explainable, but unnecessary.
 

“An audit,” I said flatly, “What fun.”
 

“At least it’ll clear out some of the dead wood. Some properties I’d rather not deal with at all.” I saw her vision sweep left and right, then she said in a low tone, “After all we did this weekend, I feel like some kind of secret agent, Ed.”
 

“Then by all means, keep things secret, Tanya. Your office could be bugged as easily as your apartment.”
 

She quickly said, “Oh, I know that! I was talking about meeting you and going to Aspen and… everything that happened, uhm…” Lowering her mental voice to a whisper, she said, “In the kitchen. On the flitter. In the shower.
Those
things.”
 

That gave me pause. If ‘those things’ were secret, was I also supposed to be a secret?
 

I chuckled, “Ah. Yes.
Those
things. Tell me something and don’t get defensive, please, because I only want to know how to act around people. Am I a secret, too?”
 

Her vision blinked, then blinked again. Tanya replied, “I… I hadn’t really thought about it.”
 

Oh, yes, she had. I could hear it in her mental voice.
 

I said, “Well, consider… How would the others in your office see me? Maybe I
should
be a secret for now.”
 

“Is… is that what you want?”
 

“Doesn’t matter to me, ma’am. I’ll just stun the first jackass who made an ugly joke about our ages.”
 

After a moment, Tanya snickered, “I know just who that would be, too. It might be worth it.”
 

Uh, huh. ‘
It might be worth it
‘ exposed her trepidation pretty well. Heh. I didn’t care what they thought, but Tanya might receive hassles and comments over our age difference.
 

“Tanya, I think I’ll be one of your mom’s old friends for now. Unless you can think of a really good reason to tell them we’re together, that is.”
 

I could tell she nodded, though her vision remained fixed on the doorway. “Yes. I think you’re probably right, Ed.”