The Lives of Tao (35 page)

Dylan knelt down and helped Paula to her feet. “Paula, just be Yol’s mouth and repeat his words for us. How are you doing, old friend?”

Paula looked at him, eyes groggy. “God, what happened to your face?”

Dylan grinned. “Sure sounds like Yol. Welcome back. I’m sorry about Gregory.”

She turned to Stephen and managed a weak smile. “Still a stiff with a suit after all these years?”

Stephen chuckled and patted her on the back. “That’s Yol all right.”

Paula looked up at Sonya. “So this is Dania’s little girl and Baji’s new host. I haven’t seen you since you were very young, Sonya. I’m sorry about your mother.” She turned to Roen with a touch of sadness. “How did Gregory outlive Edward?”

Roen opened his mouth, but no words came out. He had heard the story about Edward’s death many times, but now he couldn’t bring himself to say the words. His eyes filled with tears. He mumbled, “Sorry,” and turned away.

Paula gave him a sympathetic look and nodded. “I need to see what the damage is. Roen, could you be a dear and get me a cup of tea?” He nodded. “Earl Grey tea steeped for precisely three minutes, with a splash of non-fat milk afterward, and two spoonsful of sugar; brown please. Thanks, dear,” she added. Roen shook his head as he tried to memorize the concoction as he went to the kitchen.

Fifteen minutes later, the group huddled around Paula as she worked on the servers and firewalls. It was a dizzying array of systems, subsystems, and assembly code which made Roen’s head spin. She typed at a blinding pace, fingers blurring on the keyboard as she moved back and forth between programming languages and scripts as she navigated through multiple windows all at once.

“Damn, I’m bloody good,” she crowed as she leaned back and stretched, admiring her handiwork. Roen couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but there was a new element of histrionics in her actions that was noticeably absent from her mannerisms before. Paula turned and presented the screen with a flourish.

Dylan chuckled. “I guess we’re getting somewhere. It’s quite eerie how fast Yol’s personality infects his hosts.”

“What did you do?” Stephen asked. “Has the back door been closed?”

She nodded. Paula added, “The Genjix connection has been severed.”

“That was quick,” Dylan said. “How did you do it?”

“Root password propagated through single sign on.” She grinned. “Simple as that.”

“I thought Jeo changed all that,” Sonya said.

“He had what we call sudo root control, not
root
root. No one knows
that
root except for yours truly.”

“So,” Stephen asked. “Why was this root access not logged into our central archives?”

“Because of situations exactly like this.” Paula smirked.

“What if we had lost you to the Eternal Sea?” Sonya asked.

Paula shrugged. “You weigh your risks. If Jeo had full root access, all we could do is pull the plug on the actual boxes and pray. Every creator of our systems makes his own back door. It’s a security loophole we leave for ourselves. Since I designed most of the security systems, I made my own back door. It’s not like you were missing it. You didn’t even know it existed. And no, I won’t give it out.”

“We can talk about protocol later,” Stephen said briskly. “What’s the damage?”

“Let me check,” Paula said, sitting down and typing furiously. The screen moved at a blinding pace again as she navigated through a series of complex windows and maps.

Roen had no idea what he was seeing, let alone make sense of the complexity of the system. Several minutes passed by as she pulled up map after map of Europe and Russia. She paused every few seconds to scribble something on a piece of paper and then continued to type.

Feeling useless and sick, he left the room and went to the kitchen. There, he poured himself a scotch and waited, running the recent events over and over in his head. Looking down at the dried blood still on his hands, he got up and washed them at the sink. In all his life, Roen had never thought he’d end up where he was at right now. He was a guy who got squeamish watching horror movies. How did his life get this way?

“Tao,” he muttered. “Tao got me this way.”

I know you are upset. We can talk this over.
 

“Talk it over?” Roen bit his lip. “What’s there to talk about? We just had a shootout at a hospital, and I killed someone.”

You saved Paula’s life today and performed your duties admirably.
 

“They’re really not my duties, Tao. I’m doing your job. You know, I’ve been working so hard to become what you all wanted. I thought this was what I wanted as well. But now, I don’t like who I’ve become. This isn’t me.”

Roen, no one should have to do this, but we have no choice. You do this not only for me, but for your species. We are in this together.
 

Roen shook his head in disgust and downed his scotch. “Stop fooling yourself. We’re not in this together. I’m an unwilling participant.” He sat back down at the chair and poured himself another drink, swirling the scotch in the cup.

I am sorry you feel this way. I truly am, but what options do we have? Do we just let the Genjix win?
 

Roen grimaced and closed his eyes. “Perhaps. Perhaps you can’t, but I still can. This isn’t the life for me.”

Sonya walked into the room and looked disapprovingly at the half-empty bottle of scotch. “Paula’s done,” she said. “I thought maybe you’d be interested in seeing what your hard work has accomplished.” At this point, Roen couldn’t care less what Paula had found, but he followed Sonya back into the living room.

Paula had a look of satisfaction when they rejoined the group. “I got some good news and some bad news. Which one first?”

“The bad,” Sonya, Dylan, and Stephen all said at once. Roen shook his head. What a bunch of pessimists.

“The Genjix got into the network through UDP subnet traffic, getting past our firewalls through a hidden account that Marc hid in the systems. He must have planned his defection for months. We had half a dozen minor systems compromised.”

“So what’s the good news?” Sonya asked.

“The good news is that it’s only half a dozen minor systems. Marc isn’t as good as I thought he was, or it could have been much worse. By the way, the most recent Genjix activity was yesterday. They located the stockpile in northern Africa and managed to disable the security. You can bet they’re moving on it within the week.”

Stephen turned a slight shade of green and cursed. “That’s twenty percent of our global armaments! Who do we have defending it?”

“The security detail says less than two dozen non-Prophus guards,” Paula replied.

“That’s the good news?” Sonya demanded.

“That doesn’t sound like good news at all,” Dylan added. “Sounds like pretty horrible news if you ask me.”

Paula shrugged. “It’s actually better than I thought it’d be. We lost a lot of redundant systems and have a couple dozen or so safe houses compromised. If we move quickly, we can relocate the stockpile before the Genjix get their hands on it. It could’ve been much, much worse. I don’t know why you guys didn’t update these systems like Yol told you to years ago.” Sonya and Dylan looked at Stephen, who managed to look a little embarrassed.

Stephen is on the finance committee.
 

Stephen raised his hands defensively. “Do you know how much it costs to update all those systems? We have a war to pay for, and munitions and medical bills aren’t cheap.”

Sonya looked at Dylan accusingly. “Yeah, stop getting shot so much!”

“And you stop shooting so much!” he shot back.

Paula handed Stephen the piece of paper she’d been writing on. “Here’s the compiled list of all the compromised safe houses and systems. Get that out to Command.”

Stephen nodded and took the paper. “Good job, Yol. I’ll get this to Abrams and the fleet immediately. Now, if you will excuse me, I need to order a force to the stockpile. Clean up and close shop. I want us to be ready to leave within the hour. Good work, everyone.”

Roen looked up, startled. “Wait, did he say fleet? Tao, we have a fleet?”

It is not large; nothing to write home about, but sizable enough for an amphibious land invasion if necessary.
 

“Where the hell do they moor it? I mean, do other countries lease out docks for warships?”

Depends on the country. The Genjix pay pretty exorbitant sums to Sweden to house theirs. We pay much less hiding ours off the Ivory Coast.
We are organized much like any other government with different departments, governing bodies, and fiscal budgets to manage. The only difference is we do not have a country of our own.
 

Sonya took charge as soon as Stephen left the room, ordering the others to start packing. “Stephen’s calling in a strike. We leave for Africa in the morning.”

The thought of going to another firefight gripped Roen with dread, not because he was frightened, but because the thought of possibly killing another person made him ill. He wavered on his feet before he sat down on the couch. He watched the others pack for a few minutes before walking back into the kitchen and pouring another scotch.

Tomorrow, they would land somewhere in Africa and do it all over again. They would shoot at the Genjix, and the Genjix would shoot back. At the end of the day, everyone would rest so they could do it all over again the next day. It was like they were in Valhalla or something, except it was real. For Roen, this was hell. He felt trapped.

Roen, it is understandable...
 

“Shut up, Tao. I don’t want to hear it.”

Stephen came in and looked at the bottle. He looked as if he were about to say something and then stopped. Then he took out a glass from the cupboard and sat down next to Roen, pouring himself some scotch. Stephen lifted it up to Roen and downed the drink with one gulp. “Let me guess: you hate yourself, you hate Tao, you probably hate me, and you just want to go drown yourself in a bottle somewhere as far away as possible, right?”

“Well,” Roen said grudgingly, “I don’t hate you, I think. You just about nailed everything else though.” He paused. “How did you know?”

Stephen emptied the rest of the scotch into both their glasses and then threw the bottle into the garbage. “It’s all over your face, son. I know exactly what you’re going through. I went through the same thing.”

“But you’re one of the leaders of the Prophus,” Roen stammered. “How can you be as pathetic as me?”

Stephen shrugged. “I was a line cook in New Mexico when Camr’s old host stumbled into the restaurant, bleeding out of his head. Guy died right in front of me. Jim was his name.” Stephen lifted the glass up in a salute. “I was a damn good cook too, a white boy who cooked Mexican food in a part of the country that was half Mexican. You have to be good to survive those critics. I was younger than you, maybe twenty or so when he transitioned into me. By the time I was twenty-two, I was off on my first mission. By the time I was twenty-four, I told Camr to kiss my ass and left. Didn’t talk to the jerk for five years.”

“You left the Prophus? Why?”

Stephen grinned. “Everyone leaves the Prophus at one point in their life. Hell, it’s practically a rule, kind of like how every little girl runs away from home at least once in her life. Every agent who’s been drafted tries to get away at least once too, or in Dylan’s case, four times.”

“How’d they drag you back?” Roen asked.

Stephen chuckled. “Drag me back? I begged to come back once a couple of things changed my mind about them. First of all, I found out the Genjix got Mondale on the Democratic ticket. I knew they were up to no good then. Second of all, once you open Pandora’s Box, you can’t put that stuff back in. Do you think you can sit on the sidelines knowing everything you know now?”

“I don’t know.”

Stephen held the glass up to Roen and they touched glasses. Then he waited until Roen finished the entire drink before he put his own down, untouched. He stood up and patted Roen on the back. “Well, I’m giving you time to find out and sending you home. You think things over and come back when you’re ready. To be honest, I never agreed with the way the Keeper pushed your training, Tao or no Tao. The Quasings are important, but it’s the humans who support them who do all the hard lifting. If she has a problem with it, she can take it up with me. This would be a lot to take for anyone with a civilian background.”

“Home? What about Africa?”

Stephen shook his head. “Not with where your head’s at. You have some thinking to do.”

“What if I’m never ready?” Roen said in a small voice.

Stephen turned and walked toward the door. “Then count yourself blessed and don’t come back.”

Sean stared impassively at the screen at a chastised Marc. This was the last straw. Could he be so incompetent? The assessment on Jeo showed anything but incompetence. Unimaginative, yes; but an unmitigated failure, no. Still, two botched ambushes.

It could be that Tao’s host was now fully trained and had become the second coming of Miyamoto Musashi, but Sean doubted that as well. All reports indicated a long-term project. He should have been ripe for the picking after only a year of training. Sean knew Tao was good, but could he be that good? The responsibility ultimately fell on Sean; he accepted that. Now, he was going to correct his mistake.