Tom Clancy's Net Force 6-10 (32 page)
Later, a tall blonde girl stood with her arms around two of her girlfriends while her parents, then the parents of her friends took pictures.
As the festivities wound down, students hugging each other, slapping each other on the back, punching shoulders, a father and son walked side by side toward the parking lot. The family resemblance was strong, the boy a younger copy of his father. The father stopped walking and said, “Here, son.”
The boy took a small plastic card from his father, looked at it, then back at his dad.
“Your first year of membership in CyberNation,” his father said. He was blinking back tears.
The son looked amazed. “But—but you think this is stupid!” He waved the card a little.
“Times change, son. People change, too—they have to, or they miss what’s important in life.”
The boy looked at the card.
“Your mother would have been so proud.”
Behind them, a woman—the spirit of the boy’s mother—shimmered and appeared ghostlike into view. The father and son looked at the spirit, who smiled at them.
With the spirit of the wife and mother watching, the boy and his father embraced.
“CyberNation,” said the deep voice. “It’s today, it’s tomorrow. It’s forever.”
A small graphic appeared under the father and son, and in small print the words CYBERNATION appeared.
Michaels pointed the remote at the television in disgust and clicked the set off. “Have you seen this? A three-hanky commercial for an
Internet
service.”
Internet
service.”
Toni came out of the bathroom with the electric toothbrush in her mouth. “What?”
Michaels waved at the television. “The CyberNation ad.”
She held up a hand, a “wait a second” gesture, then went back into the bathroom. A moment later, she was back. “Let me go check on the baby,” she said.
“Already did. He’s sleeping like a rock.”
She moved to the bed and sat. “You were saying something about the TV?”
“Yeah, the CyberNation tear-jerker commercial.”
“Which one? The old lady abandoned in the nursing home by her children? Or the young guy talking to his wife’s tombstone?”
“The high school graduation.”
“Oh, that one.”
“These guys put Coca-Cola, the phone and insurance companies into the minor leagues. Most manipulative thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Wait until you see the thirteen-year-old girl orphan on the street and the cop who comes to help her,” she said. “Equal parts of pathos and pedophilia.”
He shook his head. “Don’t they have any shame?”
“Not if they sell the product.”
He shook his head again.
“So, have you thought any more about what we talked about? Guru?”
“You really want to do this?”
She nodded. “Yes. She’s as much my grandma as anybody. Every day from the time I was thirteen until I went off to college, I spent two hours with her. Sometimes at her house, sometimes on the steps out front, sometimes in the park. Rain or shine, whatever else was going on, she was there for me. She gave me a skill that’s the core of who I am. Whatever else happened to me, I was always sure I could take care of myself if somebody wanted to put his hands on me and I didn’t want him to. It was the basis of making my way in the world. If all else failed, I could kick somebody’s butt. I didn’t have to be afraid.”
He smiled at her.
“She’s useful here. Little Alex loves her. I love her. And I owe her. For so much. She’s eighty-five, she won’t be around much longer.”
He chuckled. “She’ll probably outlive us all.”
“Alex—”
“Okay. If you really want this, then, yeah, okay. Ask her.”
“You sure?”
“What I’m sure of is that I want you to be happy. Whatever it is. If that means having a coffee-swilling deadly old nanny living in the guest bedroom, what the hell.”
He didn’t think he’d ever seen her smile any bigger. She hugged him, and once again he marveled at how good that made him feel, to make her smile.
What was it Jay’s girl Saji had said recently? Making somebody smile lightens your karmic burden? Well, if that was the case, he intended to be karmically clear on Toni’s grins alone, if he could.
CyberNation Train Kassel, Germany
The train was stopped, some kind of mechanical problem, just outside Kassel, still three hundred or so kilometers southwest of Berlin. Some of the team had taken the opportunity to get off and stretch their legs, but Keller saw no reason to do so. He had never been a fan of outside. When you could go anywhere in time or space in VR, could control the weather, the smells, the action, why would you bother tromping around in the cold and dark next to a train track in the middle of nowhere? Where you had no control at all, save that of your own body’s ability to come or go? That’s what the Luddites didn’t understand, that virtual reality was so much better than the real world because you could make it do exactly what you wanted it to do. No wild cards, no chance that you would be caught in an unexpected snowstorm, or bitten by a mosquito chock full of malaria. In VR, life was what you wanted it to be.
This was the real reason that CyberNation would succeed, more than anything. As VR became more and more like RW, the ability to have anything you wanted, to see, hear, taste, touch, smell, and feel it exactly as you wished it to be, that was heaven. Give the people what they want. Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door. That was always how it had been, and that was how it was going to continue to be.
There were some things you still had to do. Serious VR players, really serious ones, could hook up IVs and catheters so they could stay jacked in for days, not having to eat or pee. Keller had done that a few times, been in VR for forty, fifty hours, even sleeping on-line, being fed dreams by programs that knew how to input them. Usually, however, he had to interface with the real world often enough so he couldn’t do that. Just like now, he had to go pee. It was a bother, but there was no help for it without a Foley running through your dick into your bladder.
He went to the toilet, which on this old-style car was a pretty big place—five stalls, five urinals, a tile floor, mirrors, sinks, the whole enchilada. Normally, they closed the toilets when the train was in the station, because when you flushed the toilet, a hole opened in the bottom and it fell right out onto the tracks. There were laws against that now in a lot of places, but people who ran private trains didn’t pay attention to them. Who was going to follow a train across the country looking to see if it was dropping turds and piss onto the tracks out in the middle of nowhere?
He stood in front of the urinal for what seemed like a long time, emptying his bladder, zipped up, and started to wash his hands.
“Hello, Jackson” came a voice from behind him.
Keller froze, as if he had seen Medusa and turned to stone.
Smiling behind him, reflected in the mirror, was Roberto Santos.
Keller forgot how to breathe. He managed to manufacture a grin that felt like a rictus. “Roberto. Wh-what are you doing here? Something wr-wrong?”
Santos moved to the door. Locked it.
Keller’s heart turned to a block of dry ice. His mouth went dry.
“Nothing wrong, Jackson. Just balancing things out.”
“Wh-Wh-Whuh—?”
“You touched my woman. You knew she was mine, and you went with her. Missy is fine, she is hot. I know it was her idea, making the two-backed beast, I know how she is. Woman’s got tricks that would make a plaster saint hard. I know turning her down is not easy. But she was mine. She still is, until I say otherwise.”
“Listen, Santos, it was a mistake, a mistake, I’m sorry, I really am, I’m sorry, what can I do to make it up to you?”
Santos smiled. “Don’t worry so much, Jackson. I’m not gonna kill you. It won’t even show. But you got a debt; it has to be paid.”
“Santos, don’t! You don’t want to do this! Jasmine will fire you!”
“No, she won’t. Because you won’t tell her.”
“I will! I will!”
“No,” he said, “you won’t. And you know why? Because if she fires me, I will come back and kill you. But only after a long, long time of you wishing you were dead. You understand?”
Keller’s fear gripped him so hard he started to shake.
Santos moved—so fast! and hit him, just under his sternum.
He . . . couldn’t . . . get . . . any . . . air—!
Santos smiled. A man enjoying himself.
As Keller tried to get his wind back, Santos hit him again.
It hurt so bad—!
The rental car was cold when Santos started it, and it took the heater a while to warm things up. He hated the cold. Even in a jacket, with gloves and a hat, he felt the chill trying to get to him. Yes, they had winter at home, but it was the kind of winter where you could walk around in a T-shirt and shorts. In June, when it was the coldest, it dropped to maybe sixty, sixty-five most nights. Mean temperature year round was seventy-something. It got hot sometimes—now, in the summer, you could work up a sweat; it actually got cold sometimes, but rarely. Those were not the normal things. In Rio, the temperature was almost always perfect. It was God’s country, and men who lived there were fortunate above other men.
Here and now, there was ice in the ponds and lakes, and patches of snow in the shadows, with more to come. How could people live in such places?
Well. They were Germans, weren’t they? And all Germans were at least slightly mad.
The plane he was going to catch was at a private airport about thirty miles away. From there, he would fly to a big airport in Berlin, and from there, back to the U.S. He was supposedly making sure that preparations for the big attack were in order, and in a way, he was. He had already talked to people he needed to talk to, and he would see others. Missy wasn’t expecting him back for a couple of days.
Putting fear into Keller was part of the preparations as far as he was concerned.
He smiled at the memory of Keller, lying curled like a newborn on the floor in the train’s washroom, a pool of yellow vomit next to him. He hadn’t really hurt the man, nothing permanent. Never hit him in the face. He would be sore tomorrow, belly, ribs, back, thighs, and he would bruise some, but nothing that would show when he was dressed. He was a flower-picker, Jackson was, his ping-pongs the size of BBs, more girl than man. It hadn’t been particularly satisfying to beat him, like slapping a child. He had offered no resistance, but it had to be that way. There were things that a man had to do if he was going to remain a man and not turn into an old woman.
He hadn’t decided yet how he was going to punish Missy, but he was smart enough to know he needed to wait until the attack was finished. There would be a bonus for successful completion, a big bonus, enough so he could walk away if he really wanted to do that. At the very least, he had to wait until that money was converted into gold and on its way home. It would not be quite as much as he wanted, but it would do. A man like him could always find more work if he had to find it.
The heater had finally begun to unfog the windows and offer enough warmth so he didn’t have to tense against the cold. Better. Not good, but better.
Keller would say nothing to Missy. If he knew anything, Santos knew when a man would stand and fight, and Keller was not such a man. Missy was more dangerous. She could put a knife between your ribs if you pissed her off bad enough and closed your eyes at the wrong time. That was part of what he liked about her. She was soft where it counted, she could wring a man dry of his essential juices, but she was also hard in her mind. He would punish her, he had to, but it must be in such a way that she could not revenge herself upon him.
He might even have to kill her. A shame, but sometimes, that’s what you had to do. People died every day. That was how life was: You came into the world, you lived your time, you left. All that mattered in between the coming and the going was how you spent your time. And for Santos, that and
O-Jôgo
—The Game.
O-Jôgo
—The Game.
All else was no more than a shrug.
28
Washington, D.C.
The lobbyist’s name was Corinna Skye. She was a drop-dead gorgeous natural blonde who looked five years younger than her thirty-five years. She was tall, slim, busty, and was a six-handicap golfer. She wore a charcoal-gray power suit, the skirt cut just short enough to show she had great legs without being titillating, a white silk blouse, and a dark red scarf. Her shoes were dark gray handmade Italian leather, one-inch heels, five hundred dollars a pair. She was smart, funny, and while many in political circles considered all lobbyists high-priced whores, she had never slept with a senator or congressman, though many of them had tried to make that happen. She had graduated first in her class at Columbia in political science, and was considered the best lobbyist on Internet issues in the country.
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