Fear the Future (The Fear Saga Book 3) (22 page)

Chapter 18: Schools of Thought

Wednesday God awoke with a start. He looked around. A pleasant-looking woman stood not far from him, smiling. Wednesday God looked at her confusedly, but the woman did not say anything. She was tall and thin, but soft looking, almost as if she was blurred at the edges. And she was beautiful. Very beautiful.

Wednesday looked around. The room was large. Larger than any he had ever slept in before. He wasn’t sure how he had gotten here and yet the room was filled with things he recognized. There was a box of toys, also larger and more full than the toy boxes he remembered, and the toys looked far nicer than his old ones, but they were of the same ilk, and he was innately curious if he was going to be allowed to play with them.

On the bed around him were the same off-white sheets he always remembered, and the same greyish blue blanket, only they were so soft. They were clean, he realized, maybe even new, he could not tell. He had rarely seen either condition.

Wednesday looked at the woman again but still she did not move, she just smiled. Wednesday pulled back the sheet and stretched out his legs. He looked at the woman as if asking if he was allowed to get out of bed, and at this the woman simply nodded.

Wednesday said, “Where am I?”

The woman tilted her head to one side, “You are in your new home. Do you like it?”

Wednesday stared at the woman a while.

“Where is everyone else?” said Wednesday. “Where is Friday?”

The woman smiled again. “Friday God is in his own room. As are the others. You will see them soon enough.”

His own room? He got his own room? Wednesday did not understand that. Friday was his friend, but he was also far from the best of the children. Why would he get his own room? No, that can’t be right. She must mean he is in trouble. Yes, he must be in some sort of punishment.

But Wednesday did not say any of this. He simply leaned forward and gingerly placed his feet on the ground, never taking his eyes from the woman standing in the corner.

They stood there, facing each other. A moment passed, and then Wednesday’s eyes flashed almost inadvertently to the box of toys in the corner then back to the woman’s. Another moment passed.

“Would you like to play with your toys?” said the woman.

My
toys? He left that hen’s tooth alone for a second, then looked around once more. There was a picture of the Son of God, and a large flower, a picture of some birds, and a picture of a mountain. He recognized everything but the mountain. It was larger than any he had ever seen.

Another long moment passed as the boy wondered what on earth was going on, and then he took a step, just one, toward the toy box. He waited a moment again, glancing nervously at the woman, as if wondering if he was being tested, and once again received only the most patient of smiles from her.

Suddenly the woman said, “Well, I will leave you to play. If you want anything, anything at all, you can come and find me downstairs, or just press that button, and I will come up.” She pointed to a small button by the door that said simply: Mother.

Wednesday stared, then managed the barest of nods, and with that, the woman swept out of the room and he was alone.

Alone.

Perhaps for the first time in years. Even the bathroom in his old home had been open, always busy, always filthy, and cluttered with his fellow orphans.

He looked around the room again as if for the first time. One bed. One bed?

He thought of Friday, and the woman’s mention of him having his own room. Was this Wednesday’s ‘own room?’

He dismissed the thought as ridiculous, and turned to the toys. A hammer, a plane, a car, a bird, mostly made of wood but some of metal. But painted. And new.

He smiled. Questions were for later. Questions were for when he did not have these toys anymore. His smile grew to fill his face and he dug in.

- - -

Two hours later, Wednesday had achieved something he had not thought possible before; he was bored of playing. Standing, he carefully placed all the toys back in their box, keeping only one, the plane, which he tucked into the back of his shorts after glancing furtively around the room.

Walking to the door, he spared a glance at the call button the woman had pointed out, and then he poked his head out. He looked this way and that, up and down the short corridor the room opened out onto. There were several more doors along it like his own. All were open, and now, as he stepped into the hall, he heard other voices for the first time since awakening. Familiar voices.

Wait, could he hear … he could hear … Friday! He ran from his door to the right, toward the sound of the voice, to a door two down and on the left, and there he was. He stared wide-eyed at his friend, who was doing as Wednesday had been, playing.

Friday had gotten every toy out, and the entire room was a mass of little enclaves: the car family parked neatly in a circle under the bed, the planes arrayed like they were coming and going from their precarious perch atop the desk, and now some kind of battle ensuing between the planes and the birds, a battle which now paused, magically, as Friday noticed his friend in the doorway.

“Wednesday!” he said in a shouted whisper, as though he had been found in the kitchen at night.

They ran to each other, toys flying as they came close.

“Can you believe it?” said Friday, whispering even more quietly now.

“No, where are we?” replied Wednesday. “The woman said you were in your room. Is this
your
room?”

“She said that to me too,” replied Friday, then even more quietly, and with a sense of awe, “and she said that these are
my
toys …
all
of them.”

It was said like he was revealing a grand plan beyond measure, a conspiracy that rocked the very foundation of everything they believed in.

“But …” said Wednesday, “
I
have a room just like it as well.”

Friday looked surprised. He did not begrudge his friend the same joy he had felt at the thought that this was all his, and he had always planned on sharing it all with his friend anyway, but the scale of his largesse was sharply diminished if his friend had such a treasure trove as well.

“Where?” said Friday, and Wednesday responded by stepping lightly out of the room and then darting over to his own as if on a covert mission. His friend was close behind him. Friday looked around. The room was virtually identical to his own, but his young eyes took it all in anew, coming to rest inevitably on the toys once more before looking agog at Wednesday.

“Where
are
we?” they said as one.

They had to find out. They crept out into the corridor once more. They looked in the other rooms. They found some of their old friends, and even some of their old schoolyard enemies in other rooms. After some further discussion, they moved off as a larger group to the staircase at one end of the corridor and down it, with infinite care, to the large floor below.

Here was a wide lounge area, filled with couches and tables, more toys, and windows looking out onto rolling green hills.

Their entire lives up to that date had been in a shared home, though to call it that would have been generous. Their entire lives had been a shared misery with minimal food, dirty clothes, and too few beds. Two to a bed had been a norm. Friday and Wednesday had slept in the same cot for the last two years. They were as close as twins, with all the rivalry, jealousy, and underlying dependence that bond implied.

They had hoped for a better life, of course. They had dreamed of more. But their lives had only ever gotten steadily worse, and to expect any different was a leap of faith that even their childish minds were not naïve enough to be capable of.

But this. This was more than a dream. This was … this was Shangri-La.

At the bottom of the stairs they turned and saw the woman once more. Some were fearful: had they done something wrong by leaving their rooms? Could they somehow jeopardize this, whatever ‘this’ was?

But just as before, she had only her infinitely patient smile for them.

Well, her infinitely patient smile and a few, simple words. “Welcome, children. Welcome to your new home. Explore, if you like. You can go outside as well. When you want to come back just find any path. All the paths lead back to this house. To your new home. But first, if you like, eat.”

She turned and indicated the room behind her. It was a long, wide country kitchen, an ideal they had never even been exposed to. Wooden countertops lined the walls. Pots, pans, and dishes lined shelves around the wall. Big sinks and a large range were clearly designed to serve a horde of hungry mouths. Their mouths, to be exact. And at the center of it all, a long kitchen table with benches on either side, and on it a plethora of meats, breads, cheeses, fruits, and vegetables like they had never seen before.

It was theirs. It was all theirs. They had suffered enough and this was their reward. The woman looked on as their instinct overwhelmed their reticence, and they surged forward, giddy with the sight.

They would have it all, all this. She would give it to them, she thought. But it would come at a price. Her face did not show her sadness, and in truth she did not really feel it either. But behind her infinite smile was an awareness of the contract these children had unwittingly signed, and what it would probably cost them in the end.

Chapter 19: Tin Can Ally

The dark sky overhead held an awesome and incredible sight, but Hektor’s and Cara’s eyes were focused on the ground. Hektor was aware of Hekaton’s presence only as a source of light, a new white orb casting its white, lunar glow from its soon-to-be permanent spot above Earth’s equatorial plane.

Hektor sat on a roof. He was squatting, but the position did not cause him discomfort. His legs were braced, his eyes closed, as he monitored the situation below. Cara was approaching the guard post now. She had been forced to leave her battleskin with Hektor, but the neatly tailored trouser suit she wore in its place was still interwoven with superconductive strands that would proffer some protection in a fight.

And she had some teeth as well. There was no way they were sending her in there without some kind of weaponry. It was not the dual tri-barrels that Hektor had mounted on his arms, but if anyone forced her into a corner they would definitely feel her.

“Guten abend. Ich habe einen termin mit Herr Pahr,” she said, in halting but passable German. The guard looked at her without emotion, surveying her. She had practiced a slouch, a gait that belied her years of combat training. These eyes were attuned to spot the telltale signs of such training.

“Namen?” said the burly man. She gave the name she had been told to give and produced a matching passport. The competence of Ayala’s organization was such that it did not suffer under the guard’s scrutiny. With her credentials validated, his demeanor changed noticeably. A guest of the minister was a guest of the minister.

“Bitte schön,” he said with a wave of his hand, and she stepped past the man and his cohorts and into the complex proper. She was screened once inside the building, both with a metal detector and a pat down. It was slightly more stringent than might have been usual, but in these uncertain days it was hardly exceptional. A seat was indicated once she had passed their inspection, along with instructions that she should wait here.

It was a beautiful building, resplendent in all the glory, both past and present, of the Austrian State. It had once been the sister city to Budapest in the days of the mighty Hapsburg Empire. But its diminished influence since its poor choice of allegiance in the Second World War had done little to diminish the splendor of beautiful Vienna. There may have been greater examples of that splendor than the Ministry building she now sat in, but even this waiting area swam with gold leaf and baroque majesty.

She sat and waited, but it was not long before an attractive but stern-looking secretary came to guide her into the complex. She was not here to see the minister, per se, though her appointment said so. She was here to see one of his many underlings. To speak with one of them, whether it be to petition them or proffer some support, was the first stage in gaining an audience with the minister himself, such was the bureaucracy of old power. Though such stages were not uncommon in younger states as well, if only in an attempt at feigning that same auspiciousness.

It was a function of the process, a vestige of power, but one that Cara was relying on even now. For this was a fact-finding mission. She actually had little if any business with the minister himself. She was there representing an organization that Ayala had co-opted for the purpose of offering a political donation, a donation they had been coerced into putting forward. Whether that donation materialized or not did not matter to Cara. She sought only the source of a secret. She sought a leak.

As she walked down the corridor, she glanced this way and that. Somewhere within this building was a person selling information about TASC, about their capabilities and the greater mission they were embarked upon. Saul had traced it here. But the path had started thousands of miles away in China.

With sensors built into her glasses she was recording data about the corridors she was walking down and the rooms she was passing. She was detailing alarm systems and security sensors, she was noting guard details and numbers of people. They had deliberately pushed for a later appointment so they could see how many people were still around toward the end of the workday.

Like most government institutions, the majority of the employees here had a strict interpretation of their hours, and they were all either packing up or already gone as 5pm approached. There were some ambitious souls about that still worked diligently away, like the one she was going to see, no doubt, but not many.

As they approached the minister’s wing, she noted the cameras and even a laser motion detector system that lined the main door and the two windows she could see from here. Interesting. That would be slightly problematic. They turned left inside the main wing, but as they walked on toward a side corridor that was lined with offices, Cara caught sight of something that was even more unusual.

She could see the main doors to the minister’s inner-offices. She could see a secondary guard detail there, again more protection than was usual, but not unheard of, not now, not with the world in such a state of unrest. But the guards were different. They were not ordinary bodyguards. It was only the slightest of things, but it was of the utmost importance: just above their shirt collars, almost innocuous, she noted a thin black line of something underneath. They were wearing tech ten armor.

And as she looked, she noted the keenness with which they were studying her as well. She looked away, cursing. She had forgotten herself. Her guise had fallen. This was not what she was trained for, this pussyfooting around. She walked on as innocently as she could, and two sets of eyes followed her as she was led to her appointment.

- - -

Her meeting was uneventful, passing with a blandness that gave her some comfort as to her safety. She wanted to leave this place. She wanted to be back in her suit. She longed for its speed and strength. She wanted her guns.

As her meeting came to an end, the undersecretary smiled ingratiatingly. He had been more than happy to switch to English, which he spoke impeccably, and had even spotted her Israeli accent as they had discussed the details of the generous offer she was there to bestow.

“I want to thank you again, Miss Woods,” he said, standing. He walked to the door as they exchanged final pleasantries, opening it and calling to his secretary to escort Cara back out of the Ministry.

But she was not there. She had been sent home. More specifically, she had been sent home by the two guards who now stood at her desk. They exchanged brief words in clipped German with the undersecretary, and he nodded appreciatively. Cara had understood most of it, but he translated anyway.

“If you have time, Miss Woods, I am informed that the minister himself would like to speak with you.” The undersecretary was excited by this, as if the honor bestowed some measure of glory on his own status as well. “If you would like to follow me, I will escort you to his office.”

But as the undersecretary stepped forward, one of the guards motioned for him to stay. He remained admirably diplomatic, despite this rebuff, saying, “Ah, naturlich, meinen herren. Umm, Miss Woods, I believe these gentlemen can show you the way.” He proffered his hand, “It appears, then, that this is good night, Miss Woods. May I say it was most pleasant meeting you.”

She smiled as ingratiatingly as she could, fighting every instinct she had. “Viele danke, Herr Staatssekretär. Guten Tag.”

Then she turned to the two guards with feigned calmness. “Shall we?”

As one led her away, the other notably fell in behind. She calculated her chances of making a break for it, running through the motions in her mind as if playing a game. How she would lash out at each, how she would look to incapacitate them. But as she studied the man in front of her, she saw telltales pointing to machine augmentation under his suit. He was not nearly as bulky as he appeared. She couldn’t tell if he was wearing a full-contact battleskin or an earlier generation, but it was still more than she could boast.

She looked for signs of a spinal interface under the back of his collar, but either way she would be hard pressed to take them out without going for kill-blows to their unprotected heads or necks. So she filed fighting away under ‘if things get out of hand’ and walked on.

- - -

The minister’s office was, of course, a large leap upward in size and adornment. Even here in the receiving area, the walls and ceiling were exercises in woodwork and molding that bordered on the ridiculous. She continued to note her surroundings as they checked her once more. They were more thorough this time, and her concerns started to grow as they politely but insistently removed her glasses and held them up to the light.

There was, of course, no prescription to the lenses, and that led, in and of itself, to proscription. It seemed she would not be allowed to have them back. She went to complain, but the expression she was greeted with could simply be categorized as nonnegotiable. She shrugged. They were fake, to be sure, but they were more capable than this man knew.

Well, thought Cara, if this minister was the source of the secrets about TASC’s capabilities, as it was becoming increasingly likely he was, then he was about to find out a few new ones.

“Good evening, Miss Woods!” said a bold and hearty voice as she was ushered into the office proper. His smile was genuinely charming, his demeanor nothing if not amiable. He strode over to her with all the confidence and bonhomie of an old friend and proffered his hand as if it were his true delight to meet her.

She took it, noting the briefest of sideways glances as he stepped up to her. Confirming, with his guards, no doubt, that she had indeed proven to be unarmed.

“Herr Pahr. Rudolf, if you please.”

His eyes spoke a question: ‘and you are …’ and she responded, “Miss Woods. Cara, if
you
please.”

She smiled, perhaps without conviction, and saw that he was evaluating her with practiced ease as they stared at each other. She thought she might have seen him coming to a conclusion about her, no, she
did
see it, and with that he nodded and turned to walk over to where two large armchairs faced each other on one side of his large office, along with a couch, a small but ornate coffee table, and a large and far more ornate fireplace.

“Please, Cara, sit … sit.” he indicated the armchair opposite his own, and waited for her to take a seat before doing so himself.

After a moment of staring at his smile, one that was now bordering on smug, she said, “I wonder, Herr Pahr … Rudolf, if I may have my glasses back, please.”

He looked at the more senior of his guards with some measure of alarm at the thought that his guest might have had her personal property seconded by them, but when the guard in question shook his head, the minister’s look turned to one of surprise, then one of curiosity.

He said, “I am afraid it appears that my head of security does not think your glasses are all that they seem. Or rather, he seems to think they are somewhat
more
than they seem. Do you have any idea why he might think such a thing?”

She looked at him. He was toying with her, but he was also treading carefully. He could not know whom she represented. If he wasn’t careful, though, he was about to find out.

“Well, Rudolf,” she allowed some of her derision at the name to bleed into her voice, and noted as his expression shifted ever so slightly at her mockery, “all I know is that I would like them back. If your gorillas choose to keep them then that is up to you, but I will ask once more, politely, if they may be returned to me before we continue this conversation.”

She was trying to be meek, compliant even, though it was not an art she was familiar with. He mistook her tone for a weakness, and decided to keep the glasses as a trump card.

“I think not, Cara. Maybe after we have concluded our business we might return them to you … maybe.”

He smiled again. She shook her head. Any moment now. The ping came to her as question in her mind. The glasses were an insurance policy. They had been silent for a while, but they were designed to know if they were on her or not. If they were separated from her for too long they were designed to ask why. If she did not respond, well, then they would ask for help, and that would bring in Hektor, most probably with all the diplomatic grace of a stampeding rhino.

She silenced it immediately. Maybe the minister’s security would not notice it. This was the question. TASC did not know yet how much this man was aware of. But the sudden entrance of another guard and the shared whisper with Herr Pahr’s head of security was too well timed to be a coincidence.

The minister looked curious, and that inquisitiveness only increased when his head guard came over and whispered into his ear.

“It appears that your glasses, such as they are, have begun transmitting a signal,” he said with a smile. “Not, I think you will agree, the normal behavior of a pair of spectacles. I don’t think mine do that. Do yours, Karl?” he smiled at his guard, who shook his head without humor.

“Now,” he said, also without humor now, “maybe you can tell me what you are really doing here, Miss Woods, and who you really work for. Spying is a very serious offense here in Austria, and one for which you will be held fully accountable, if you do not cooperate.” He waited a moment, and then after he was met with only silence, added simply, “So?”