Lethal Velocity

  Time to arrange the contingency. Putting the paper aside, he slipped a cell phone from his suit jacket and dialed.

  “Ah,” he said when a voice answered. “There you are.”

  The voice on the other end was subdued, furtive. And yet the nervousness, irritation, uncertainty it carried were unmistakable. “It’s high time you called. This isn’t working out as planned, and I for one don’t like it.”

  “Not as planned? How, exactly?”

  “I already told you.” The voice was now barely more than a whisper. “That business in Griffin Tower, or in Waterdark. Nobody was supposed to get hurt. And that security specialist, backstage at Galactic Voyage—my God, did you have to kill him?”

  “I’m afraid there was no choice.”

  “There’s just been too many nasty surprises. And Tibbald never returned from the drop. I’m concerned he might have gone native on us.”

  John Doe took another sip of coffee, accepted the menu from the waiter, watched the man walk away. “I wouldn’t worry about Tibbald. I’m sure he’ll turn up.”

  “And what’s this about the second handoff? It’s entirely unacceptable, it was never in the script—”

  “Perhaps it was. Perhaps it wasn’t. That’s not important right now.” And here John Doe’s voice lost a bit of its good humor. “What is important is that Cracker Jack has stopped transmitting.”

  “Why? What’s going on?” The uncertain overtone in the voice grew more pronounced.

  “I’m not sure. Perhaps somebody’s getting frisky. Perhaps it’s the work of our unexpected guest, Andrew Warne, who’s been poking about where he’s not welcome. Or perhaps there was some unforeseen circumstance. Whatever the case, Cracker Jack killed the surveillance feeds.”

  “I know.”

  “That’s a signal his work upstairs is done, but that we can’t count on him for the, ah, basement preparations. You’ll have to hold up your end. Personally. Do you understand?”

  “I got started once I heard about the video going down. I’ll be finished in a few minutes.”

  “Good.” Contingency arranged with—as expected—almost depressing ease. “We’ll move up certain events to compensate for any loss of control. But this still leaves one open item. Your friend, Warne. Cracker Jack tracked him down earlier, and we went to have a talk with him. But it appears somebody else was wearing Warne’s imagetag. And we tried that lab you mentioned, the robotics lab, but it was empty.”

  “I’ve been down here the last half hour. I don’t know where he’s got to.”

  “Then we need to learn where. This is the final act of our little performance. We have to convince him it’s in his best interests not to meddle further.”

  There was a pause on the other end of the line. “You promise not to hurt anyone else?”

  “Of course.”

  “Because I won’t take blood money. There’s no sense going forward if there’s going to be more violence.”

  “No sense?” And here John Doe’s voice became quite different: low, disdainful, menacing. Even the accent shifted subtly. “I warn you, don’t sport with my intelligence. Expressions of altruism make my gorge rise. Everything we do, we do out of self-interest. You, my friend, are no exception. Assertions to the contrary would be mere self-delusion. Need I remind you whose idea this was to begin with? Who contacted who? Need I remind you, again, of the consequences of developing an eleventh-hour conscience? Remember who I’ll be meeting, just a few minutes from now.”

  There was another pause, longer this time.

  “In a few minutes,” John Doe said, his voice mellowing, growing silken, “we will have everything we came for. Will you?”

  At last, the silence on the other end was broken. “Warne has a daughter,” came the strangled voice. “Her name’s Georgia. She’s down in Medical.”

  John Doe’s eyebrows shot up. “Indeed? That’s very interesting.”

  “Remember your promise.”

  “And remember yours. Screw your courage to the sticking place. Another forty-five minutes, and we’ll all be gone.” And with that, John Doe returned the phone to his pocket, picked up the cup of coffee, and continued his perusal of the newspaper.

  —

  ON THE OTHER end of the line, in a large but austere office far below Chumley’s Café, the phone rattled slightly as it was replaced in its cradle. The hand that dropped it pressed against the handset for a moment, as if to stifle any further sound. Then it moved across the desk to a freshly burned disc, shimmering like pale crystal inside its protective housing. The hand paused there for a moment, fingers drumming anxiously. And then it reached for a nearby computer keyboard, dragged it closer, and began typing, hesitantly at first, then faster and faster.

  “LET ME GET this straight,” Warne said. “This was your important stop?”

  Poole stopped a passing hostess. “Sam Adams, all round.”

  “Make mine a mineral water, please,” Warne sighed. The hostess nodded, then closed the visor of her helmet and glided away between the tables.

  Warne turned back to Poole. “You know, Peccam isn’t going to be pleased when he learns we gave him the slip just to grab a cool one.”

  Poole merely shrugged, smiled his distant smile.

  They were in the Sea of Tranquility lounge, a large, circular space, dimly illuminated in black light. Guests chattered at nearby tables, sipping drinks and munching exotic-looking bar snacks. Warne could hear shouts and laughter floating in from Callisto’s main concourse: from the rear came the clinking of coins and whirring of slot machines within the adjoining casino. Overhead, endless galaxies glittered against a midnight sky. The floor was made of some dark composite, through which gleamed a vast, apparently bottomless starfield. Despite his preoccupation, Warne found himself marveling at the illusion: it really appeared as if the tables around them were floating in an infinity of space. It was an unnerving sensation.

  Terri hung her laptop on the side of her chair. “It’s against policy for Utopia cast and crew to visit the casinos while working.” It was meant as a joke, but her voice was strained.

  “Who’s visiting?” Poole said. “The casino’s over there. And besides, who’s working?”

  “We should be working,” Warne replied. “That’s the problem.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Poole asked. “At what?”

  “At that Trojan horse. Disassembling it, trying to learn which bots have been modified.”

  Poole shook his head. “You don’t really want to go back to that office, do you? It’s safer here—a public place, dimly lit. Besides…”

  He finished the sentence with a mere wave of the hand, but it was enough. These guys have run rings around you, that wave said. More computer time’s not going to get you anywhere.

  It was something Warne had not cared to admit. But now he found his thoughts returning to the hacker, in the holding tank of the Security Complex. The way he’d lunged, sneered at him. His words, dripping with scorn and derision, echoed in Warne’s head. I know all about you, your little shit program. Pathetic. You don’t have a clue to what’s going on. The code had been far cleverer than he cared to admit. It had been sheer chance they’d caught the guy at all.

  You don’t have a clue to what’s going on.

  He shifted restlessly in his seat.

  The hostess returned with their drinks, placing them on the table with silver-gloved hands. Although the three of them must have been a sight—scuffed, bandaged, bruised—the woman merely smiled through her visor and walked away.

  There was a sudden burst of laughter nearby, and Warne looked over. Two youths—teenagers, by the look of them—were guzzling tall, brightly colored frozen drinks at an adjoining table. One was wearing a long wizard’s cape, obviously purchased in Camelot, over his T-shirt and frayed shorts. It was a fashion statement that would have looked hilariously incongruous anyplace but Utopia.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw Poole tilt the beer into his glass, raise it to his lips, t
ake a long pull. The red-spotted gauze bandage fluttered loosely at his wrist.

  Terri broke the silence. “You still haven’t told us why you’re doing all this.”

  Poole put down his glass and wiped his lips with an oddly dainty motion.

  “That’s right,” Warne added. “You could have been here all this time, relaxing. Instead of getting kicked at, shot at, God knows what else.”

  Poole smiled. “Think of the people who spend thousands of bucks on those phony mystery weekends at hotels. This is much better. And the price is right.”

  “You act like it’s just part of the entertainment.”

  “Isn’t it?” Poole’s smile widened. “Besides, it gives me a chance to keep my hand in, sharpen up the old skills.” And he took another sip of his drink.

  Warne looked at him with a sigh of resignation. He didn’t think he’d ever met anybody quite so hard to read.

  “You’ve got a point about that lab,” he said. “So then if it’s all the same to you, Terri and I will go visit my daughter.” He started to rise.

  “What’s your hurry? In another fifteen minutes, John Doe will get his disc. And then he’ll walk into the sunset, the houselights will come up, the music will swell. Happy ending, right?” Poole said this in an exceedingly unconvincing tone of voice.

  “What?” Terri said. “What are you getting at?” She took a sip of the beer, made a face, pushed it away.

  “I said this was an important stop, right? And I meant it. But much as I wanted a beer, it was the stop that was important.”

  Warne sat down again. He shook his head. “You’re speaking in riddles.”

  “No, I’m not. Remember who I am here. I’m the observer, the outsider who doesn’t really know what’s going on.” He took another sip. “That means, while you all have been racing around like headless chickens, I’ve watched. I’ve listened.”

  Warne glanced across the table at Terri. She shrugged in reply.

  “What’s your point?” he asked.

  Poole picked up the bottle of Sam Adams, scratched idly at the label with a finger. “Haven’t you noticed a pattern here?”

  “No.”

  Poole continued to scratch. “They tell you to keep everyone in the dark about what’s going on. And then they run you ragged, keep you reeling from one thing to another, never give anyone time to draw breath. To stop and ask a few basic questions.” He set down the bottle. “Because this whole thing is like a jigsaw puzzle. You find the right piece, you see the whole picture. And they can’t allow you to do that.”

  “Basic questions?” Warne asked. “What kind, exactly?”

  “Here’s one. If these guys are so good, why did they screw up on Waterdark? They intended to blow the whole ride, teach a lesson. What luck that retaining spar broke the way it did, keeping the ride from collapsing. But I disagree. I saw the blast signature from that charge, remember? Whoever set it was a goddamn artist. If they’d wanted to destroy that ride, they’d have done it.”

  So there was no miscalculation, after all, Warne thought to himself gloomily.

  Terri shifted impatiently in her seat. “Okay. Call me dumb, but I’m not getting something here.”

  “These guys want to bang up some people, cause a lot of hand-wringing. But despite what John Doe says, they don’t want a panic. Not now. That wouldn’t fit into their plans. We have to assume that everything these guys do happens for a reason. The explosion in Waterdark? It was set to break exactly the way it did.”

  There was a brief silence while this was digested.

  “If you ask me, that sounds nuts,” Terri said. “But here’s another question. You said everything these guys do happens for a reason. Remember how Allocco said that hacker in the Hub killed the video feeds? He shut down everything but the casinos and C Level. The casinos make sense, they have their own systems. But C Level is part of the central surveillance network. Why wasn’t it shut down, too?”

  “I don’t know,” Poole said. “What’s down there?”

  “Power plant. Laundry. Environmental Services, Treasury Operations, Food Services. Machine shops, attraction repair, data processing. Back-office stuff.”

  “That power plant you mention,” Poole said. “It isn’t nuclear, is it?”

  Terri rolled her eyes.

  Poole shrugged. “One hears rumors.”

  For a few moments, the table was silent.

  “You called it a jigsaw,” Warne said. “But we don’t have any pieces. What kind of puzzle do you call that?”

  “You’re forgetting we have a critical piece,” Poole replied. “Our friend in the cell. And he said something very interesting.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You remember how he reacted when he learned who you were? That, at least, wasn’t a put-on. He wanted your throat. But it doesn’t follow.”

  “Of course it does,” Terri said. “Andrew here rained on his parade. Wrecked everything for him.”

  “Maybe. But do you remember why he was ripshit? Think back to what he said. It was your messing around with the system that really riled him.”

  “So?” Warne asked.

  “Why wasn’t he mad about the trap they set in, what’s it called, Galactic Voyage? That was their real problem. If it wasn’t for that, they’d have gotten their disc and all been gone long ago. Right?”

  Warne paused, thinking.

  “Inay,” Terri muttered beside him.

  The shattered disc. He’d forgotten all about it. Warne reached into his pocket, pulled out the Ziploc bag Sarah had left in the medical bay.

  “What’s that?” Poole asked.

  “Shards from the Crucible disc,” Warne said. “Crushed in the scuffle.” He laid it on the table. “So what are you saying, exactly?”

  “I’m saying this whole thing sounds like a stall. A carefully orchestrated, carefully concealed stall.”

  “But why?” Terri asked, picking up the bag, turning it over curiously in her hands. “What are they waiting for?”

  “Yes. That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?”

  And in the silence that followed, he drained his glass and set it on the table with a sigh of satisfaction.

  ALTHOUGH THERE WERE no clocks on display in the public areas of Utopia, the time was precisely ten minutes to four.

  In Gaslight, a large crowd had gathered outside the entrance to the Holo Mirrors. This was not the attraction’s real name: on guidemaps, and on the ornate sign above the pre-show area, it was prominently labeled Professor Cripplewood’s Chamber of Fantastic Illusion. It was a next-generation hall of mirrors, using Utopia’s Crucible technology to render lifelike holograms from secretly taken photographs of those who stepped inside. The holograms were processed to look like mirror images, then displayed in real time throughout the chamber’s dimly lit maze. Actual mirrors were used as well, creating a fiendishly baffling environment. Visitors, stumbling through the twisting corridors, were constantly confronted by images of themselves and other guests in the maze: yet they could never be sure if these were actual reflections, or holographic renderings of themselves, taken at earlier points in the chamber. Guests emerged disoriented, frightened, fascinated. Holo Mirrors—as it was universally known—was such an unusual experience that it had the highest same-day repeat percentage of any attraction in Gaslight.

  Only the crowd currently outside was not full of the usual expectant eagerness. There were cries of frustration from guests who had waited in line nearly an hour, only to learn that the attraction was being temporarily shut down due to operational difficulties. Attendants in crinolines and foremen in frock coats worked the line, soothing tempers with return vouchers and casino chips. To one side of the brick-front entrance, Sarah Boatwright stood, arms folded, almost invisible in the mist. She was watching the milling crowd. One hand was pressed protectively against a disc in her jacket pocket.

  —

  FAR OVERHEAD, IN the pitiless Nevada sun, the cool moist fog of Gaslight was like
a dream of a gentler world. The man known as Water Buffalo had finished his work and now sat in a gully, resting in the shadow cast by the smooth curve of the Utopia dome. A two-way radio lay beside one knee, a plastic water bottle by the other. From time to time he took his eyes from the dome and gazed over the rocky lip of the escarpment, down the long dusky road far below that snaked away from staff parking and vanished into the dry tableland of Yucca Flats.

  —

  FIFTEEN MILES AWAY, beyond the limits of vision, two vehicles were heading northwest along Highway 95. The rear vehicle was a late-model sedan, an amber flasher on its dashboard and a bulky takedown light fixed outside the driver’s window. Long whip antennas bobbed on either side of the trunk. The car was painted white, but was now brown as a wren from the miles of dust thrown up by the vehicle in front of it.

  The forward vehicle was an armored car, Ford model F8000, painted red with white accents around the muzzle ports and window cowlings. The ten-speed diesel rumbled unhappily, laboring under the weight of the quarter-inch ballistic steel that covered the body panels, laterals, and roof. A lone guard sat in the payload compartment, back against the wall, booted feet on the fragmentation blanket that covered the floor. A pump-action shotgun rested between his knees. Man and gun swayed together, jouncing in time to the heavy suspension.

  In the forward compartment, the line-haul driver guided the vehicle up the grade. Beyond the dashboard, the browns, yellows, and greens of the high desert landscape looked slightly unearthly, their colors shifted by the bullet-resistant transparent armor that made up the windshield.