The World Game (38 page)

“Sorry sir!” said the bot. “Still calibrating. What can I do for you sir?”

Nickle gritted his teeth and said, “I have a broken hip, a broken arm and several broken and now crushed fingers. I am starving and dehydrated. What else do you want to know?”

“What is your mother’s maiden name sir?”

“WHAT?”

“Your mother’s maiden name please sir. I need to validate your identity before providing treatment. You have a co-pay of thirty five credits if you check out okay.”

“Aw!” moaned Nickle. “Mother’s maiden name was Gunston.”

“That is correct sir. However, you said WAS, not is. Where is your mother now sir?”

“She’s dead you dickhead robot. Has been for twenty five thousand years.”

“My sincere condolences sir. As she is dead and I am unable to verify your response, let me ask some other security questions.”

“JUST HELP ME YOU MORON!”

“Abusive talk will get you nowhere sir. What was the name of your first pet?”

Nickle thought clearly for a moment. The idiot bot said “was” the name. Won’t matter if the pet is dead. “My first pet was called Rocky.”

“Good sir. Now was Rocky one of the following, a squid, a porcupine or a dog?”

“A DOG! NOW HELP ME!”

“Excellent sir. How would you like to do your co-pay sir? I take credit card or direct debit of your account on file.”

Nickle sighed in defeat.”Direct debit.”

“Thank you sir. Please enter your pin number on my number pad sir.”

“I can’t. My fingers are crushed because you ran over them.”

“I do apologize sir. I will request a ten credit discount for your inconvenience. Now please enter the pin number.”

“I just told you I can’t. One arm is broken and doesn’t move and my fingers don’t work on the other hand.”

“One moment please!”

The bot made some whirring noises and rolled around Nickle’s body, stopping at his only working limb, his right leg. “Please enter your pin using your toes sir.”

“AAAAHHHGGG! I HAVE SHOES ON YOU IDIOT!”

“Your ten dollar discount is cancelled due to further verbal abuse. Please remove your shoes.”

“I can’t move.”

“I will remove them for you sir. That will require a further thirty five credit co-pay.”

“Fine. Do it. AAAHHHHGGG!” Nickle split the air with another scream of pain as his broken hip was wrenched by the bot pulling off the left shoe. It then did the right shoe.

Nickle didn’t see the board going green all over for the first time in eons, as Charonelle surreptitiously routed feed to the control room. The network was getting off on Nickle’s agony because the real show was static.

“Please input your pin sir.”

Nickle raised his working leg and squinted at the pin pad six feet away. Even with socks on he figured he could hit the right four numbers. He went for it.

“Sorry sir, incorrect pin number. Try again.”

He tried again.

“Almost sir. One number wrong. Try again.”

“Please remove the sock on my right foot robot.”

“Yes sir. That will be another thirty five credit co-pay.” The robot pulled off the sock, pinching and breaking the middle toe in the process. Nickle just whimpered. He had no scream left in him. He carefully aimed and pressed the correct sequence.

“Very good sir. I need to do an IME sir to determine what procedures should be followed.”

“What’s an IME?”

“Initial Medical Examination. I will determine if I can treat you sir or if we have to send you to a trauma center.”

“Robot, is there any way we can skip the IME and get down to treatment. I am in agony here and close to dying.”

“Oh sir, I will immediately reclassify you as an emergency. All the co-pays are cancelled. Triage commencing!” The robot started making all sorts of dings and whistling noises as it ran around Nickle, sending probosci into his body, measuring and recording. “Most serious deficiency is hydration sir. I am inserting an intravenous feed of fluid and nutrients.”

Arms and tools popped in and out of the medic bot and gradually Nickle started to look like an Egyptian mummy as his fractures were taped. The bot trundled into its closet and came back with an inflatable half body cast to immobilize the broken hip. Once applied, the bot lifted Nickle and placed him on his sleeping pallet and put Nickle into a deep sleep.

The board went yellow and then blank.

“Nickle? Oh Nickle?” wheedled Charonelle. “Nickle?”

CHAPTER
76

“We may have an identifier!” said Shaw excitedly. He and Corcoran had been using the nano-paint as the basis for the possible alien infiltration device. They had nothing else to go on. They had looked at detecting the emissions from the nano-paint but nothing was apparent unless and actual transmission was in progress, and even then it was almost impossible to detect as the nano-paint was programmed to detect the detector and shut down.

What Shaw and Corcoran had found was that a spectrum analysis of the interface between the nano-paint and the base paint or varnish layer showed a distinct spectral variation. As good as the nano-paint was, it was programmed to fool the human eye, not a precision instrument that was never expected by the designers of nano-paint. The spectrum analyzer viewer consistently showed a line when nano-paint was present.

“Okay Gerald, let’s go look around with this.” Corcoran led off with the spectral analyzer held in front of him like a flashlight with a view screen at the back. It was standard equipment on the transports for detecting micrometeorite hull leaks. The escaping molecules of gas altered the spectrum of reflected light off the hull, just as it had detected the nano-paint earlier.

Corcoran paused and turned to Shaw, saying, “If you were an alien hooked on voyeurism and getting off on violence and sex, where for certain would you put a spy? And especially if it was your favorite X-rated couples, Hannaford and Shaw and Johnson and Martin?”

Shaw looked at Corcoran wide eyed. “Not in my bed room they don’t.” He took off, Corcoran trailing with the spectral analyzer. At least Shaw’s mind was temporarily off the predicament his wife and child were in.

They reach Shaw’s living quarters and burst in, looking about and swinging the spectral analyzer all over the place. “Hang about.” Corcoran stopped. “This isn’t getting us anywhere. Let’s be scientific again. Stop, look and think. Where would you get the best view of the hottest couple in the universe?”

“Above the bed!”

They moved into the master bed room and turned on the lights. The walls had pictures and mirrors attached. The ceiling was flat white with illumination panels strategically set for gentle illumination. Above the double bed was a clean expanse of ceiling.

Corcoran aimed the analyzer at the center of the ceiling, above the bed, and peered at the screen. “Well what have we here?” Shaw looked over his shoulder. “What we have here is an interesting spray of spectrally different dots, but we are not getting a line definition.” He hit the magnification times twenty which brought a small area of the scatter into focus revealing dots within the dots. Further magnification was unable to resolve a final particle size. It was too small for the analyzer’s optical function which could get down to cellular level, but not molecular or atomic.

“We need a sample for analysis.” said Shaw, climbing up on the bed to reach the low ceiling.

“No! Don’t touch it! You’ll tip them off that we found them.”

“Doesn’t matter, they won’t know for days or even weeks. We look like a frozen movie screen to them because our time has virtually stopped relative to the universe. That they even inserted this stuff doesn’t make sense to me and there have been no disappearances since it happened.” He reached up and carved a circle of paint away with his utility knife, peeling the circle of emulsion away like wallpaper and dropping it into a bag.

Corcoran had the analyzer pointed at the spot. “The dots are moving in to fill the space. They must be autonomous like our nano-paint. Hold up the bag for me.” He trained the analyzer on the bag. “They have grouped to the center of the patch. About the size of a cent coin. Let’s get back to the lab.”

Now they knew what they were looking for, Corcoran kept scanning walls and ceilings all the way back. Apart from a true patch of dirt, the complex was infested with small, strategically positioned patches of alien transmitters.

Shaw had notified Fuller of their success and he was waiting for them, after giving Sheila and her team the go ahead on their rescue plan. The rest of the personnel were searching for the alien delivery vehicle while Lewis and Lucas were close to developing the likely alien profile.

Sheila’s team had the most intensive job at that moment. Fuller had search teams close by ready to back Sheila up in an instant and the Doctor and Lucas were ready to drop their task and assist her in negotiating.

The four team members were at the access hatch and already cutting away the lock mechanism with a small laser torch. It fell away to the pseudo gravity and the hatch swung open easily. The tunnel behind was just an unlit crawl tunnel, so they crawled. Sheila carried a flashlight and locator that was fed by the central dimage. As they moved, it added the unknown tunnels to the map.

She stopped suddenly so she would not slip forward as the tunnel sloped sharply down. She could see small ridges in the floor ahead, obviously for friction to allow movement up the incline and prevent uncontrolled sliding down. If not for the youniform, her knees would have been shredded. She moved on cautiously, noting that the tunnel was man made of concrete and not carved from bed rock. Up ahead she could see an end wall and a deep shadow to the right where the tunnel turned.

She signalled her team to stop, turned off her flashlight and moved forward, feeling her way to the edge of the corner. She peeked around and pulled back, expecting to see more darkness. The latent image in her mind showed a grating with a little light slipping through. A ventilation duct screen. She signalled to move forward, complete silence.

At the screen Shelia took out a syringe with a long tube instead of a needle and slipped it through the lowest slot, right in a corner where it would not be noticed, and depressed the plunger for one drop of the liquid to be expelled.

The thinned nano-paint flowed out and onto the chamber wall, returning an image to their youniform viewers instantaneously. It was not a scene that anyone had expected. Fuller and his group watching in real time were astonished.

The view was of the annex to the main reactor room, with control panels and screens around the perimeter. The focus was the group in the center of the room.

Felicity was taped to a chair by her wrists and ankles, a piece of duct tape over mouth. Next to her, looking frantically wide eyed at the vent and wagging his head negatively, was Zardooz, similarly taped up. Beside them stood Arjmand who had wrapped some cloth around his head to make a turban, holding little Jodie and talking to her in Farsi, waving his free arm about and with a wild look in his eyes.

On closer observation Arjmand also had something clutched in his hand with his thumb pressing down on a button. A dead man’s switch.

Arjmand stopped his ranting as Fuller’s voice came across the comms system. “President Arjmand, how are you feeling today?”

The bland, unthreatening line took Arjmand by surprise. His delusional state had prepared him for an all out assault, not a friendly greeting. Taken aback, he blinked, lost for words. Then it started.

“You must address me as “Your Highness” the incarnation of Sal-A-Din, the greatest warrior of Islam, ruler of the world and chosen of Allah!” he screamed, startling Jodie into crying and reaching for her mommy. “Bah!” Arjmand dumped Jodie onto Felicity who could do nothing. He reached out and ripped the duct tape off her mouth without warning.

“I will let your whore here talk to you. She knows what is required by Allah! If you do not comply immediately I will kill this brat first, then I will cut Zardooz to pieces and them to her and then I kill her very slowly. If you still refuse I let this button go and the reactor blows up.” He turned and ripped the tape off Zardooz. “Tell them Zardooz. Tell them that I know exactly what I am doing.”

Zardooz, face raw where the tape had ripped out a day’s growth of beard, gasped in pain. “He knows... he knows, Col. Fuller. I was just going to take control of the fragment for Iran. I brought Arjmand down here also and he somehow got loose and stunned me. I had no idea he was this mad...” Zardooz was cut off by a vicious backhanded blow to his face that rocked his whole body. Stunned, his eyes rolled back in his head, unconscious. Arjmand continued to kick and punch Zardooz, only stopping when he saw that it had no effect on the man who was out cold.

Arjmand slowly looked up and around, his thought processes coming together to realize that Fuller could see him. He stopped and a crafty look came over his face. “Colonel Fuller, I wish to see you immediately on screen, or she gets the same treatment!”

In the control room Fuller did not hesitate and projected himself to the comms screen. He pressed the background omit to keep a slight edge and looked to the Doctor. Fuller had to be constantly on screen so they resorted to writing fast notes. Fuller’s first was “He doesn’t know about the duct?”

The Doctor wrote back, “Clearly not. He would have done something about it by now.”

“Dragged in unconscious or drugged by Zardooz?”

“For certain.”

While all this scribbling was going on, Arjmand was ranting at Fuller’s image, nothing intelligible and in a mix of Farsi and English.

Fuller wrote, “Warn Sheila to be ready to move - risk - but have to stop him.”

“Done. Your call. Nothing anyone can do right now.”

Fuller wrote to Lucas, “Recommendation?”

“Move fast. He is totally unstable.”

“Dead man switch?”

“Confrontation - no kill - Sheila move fast - martial arts - only way.”

“Tell Sheila I will enrage him - distraction - get vent loose and ready to enter - explain non-lethal.”

Lucas instructed Sheila precisely while Fuller waited for the ranting to stop. The longer the better for Sheila to prepare.

After a few minutes Arjmand calmed down, so Fuller started. “Your Higness Sal-A-Din, I would like to discuss this situation with you man to man. Will you allow me to join you?”

“This will do Col. Fuller. I want none of your satanic tricks.”

“Okay Your Highness. But I am concerned that your brilliant plan to honor Allah has been far eclipsed by the exploits of one much greater than Your Highness.”

Arjmand reacted to this by stiffening up and closing with the screen, as if face to face with Fuller. “And who is this greater than myself person?” he screamed.

“There was a great leader of a group called Al-Quaeda at the beginning of this century who claimed to be fighting the war of the prophet for the same sake of Allah...”

Arjmand cut Fuller off shrieking, “You do not compare me with that pig dog Osama Bin Laden! He never set foot near an action and lived like you western decadent dogs. All he did was send others to be killed. I am here doing Allah’s work myself, just like my name sake, Sal-A-Din. If I die now it will be for Allah in glory, not shot down among whores and dumped out of a helicopter into the sea. I will...”

There was a loud crash from off picture as Sheila and her team tumbled into the room in a controlled avalanche of bodies. Sheila was focussed on Arjmand and his hand holding the switch.

She whispered “God help me!” and dived at Arjmand who instinctively kicked out a leg, blocking her move.

Arjmand’s mind went blank and he released the switch.