This is, of course, very useful to us. But it worries me. The prowl cruiser no longer seems to have any balanced notion of jeopardy. I wonder what else might have burned out. Its navigational hardware, for example. Its collision-avoidance systems. Its good sense not to fly us into the heart of a sun.
“We need a new ship,” Gamora told Rocket.
“No, no, the cruiser’s gonna be fine,” he assured her.
Certainly, the cruiser was now entirely happy for Rocket to take the helm, and quite untroubled when Groot opened the panels of its central processor and wired in the Slig disguiser.
“Is that an actual Slig disguiser?” the automatic voice asked enthusiastically.
“I am Groot.”
“Wow, it’s a beauty! This vehicle is impressed. This vehicle feels like it can impersonate anything! Wanna see this vehicle be a Judan hyperfreighter? No, wait, a Kree battleship? Yeah?”
“I am Groot.”
“Groot’s right,” said Rocket. “This vehicle, just play it cool. We’re just a Timely Inc. courier runabout, okay? The plan, remember?”
“Oh, yeah, yeah, totally, the plan,” the automatic voice replied. “Sure, sure. This vehicle is totally down with the plan, guys. Pretend like we’re a Timely Inc. courier, sneak into Alpha C HQ, and get the skinny on what the Recorder-dude is all about. Totally. That’s totally, utterly cool with this vehicle.”
“Great,” said Rocket.
“So, okay,” the automatic voice said. “Let this vehicle get into the part. Let this vehicle get a sense of the role. Hmmmm. Hmmunnaaa. One-two. One-two. La-la-la-la-la. Num-num-num-num-num. Okay! This vehicle is now a Timely Inc. delivery courier, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Fabulous. So what’s this vehicle’s motivation?”
“What?”
“How do you want this vehicle to play it? Surly? Worlds-weary? Cocky but likable? With a stammer? What about an accent?” “Just… just be a Timely Inc. delivery courier, okay?”
Thus, with a lisp and a surprisingly unconvincing Xandarian accent, we arrive at Timely Inc. HQ.
THE sheer scale of Timely Inc. Corporate Headquarters seems intimidating, but Rocket informs us he knows his way around. Apparently, a while back, he used to work here. In the mail room. This was “in a dry stretch between shooting work,” he explains.
He tells us to stay in the cruiser and skips out of the hatch, darting along the rear wall of the docking port under the heavy chrome pipework of the exhaust extractors.
He is gone for about ten minutes. When he returns, he is wearing a shiny yellow plastic cap, shiny yellow plastic overalls, and shiny yellow plastic boot-covers over his Guardians uniform, and he is pushing a heavy-duty janitorial cart laden with recycling drums, mops, and vacuum hoses. He wheels it aboard.
“I sense that this is part of a plan,” Gamora announces dubiously. “I do not like the way I feel this plan might develop.”
“Well, pooh to you, miss hater,” Rocket replies. “This, my green fruity, is a superb plan. It’s in Sun Tzu’s Art of War.”
“It isn’t,” I say. I’m fairly certain of this, unless I have seriously misinterpreted Rocket’s intentions.
“Sure it is, Recorder-dude,” Rocket replies, pulling three more sets of shiny yellow caps and overalls out of one of the cart’s bins. “Chapter seventy-something says, ‘When sneaking into an enemy’s encampment, especially one the size of a city that is kept spotlessly clean to impress visitors, no one will notice you if you dress as janitors. Because there are many janitors.’”
“It doesn’t,” I say. “It actually doesn’t say that.”
“Well, it should,” he scowls. “This is the corporate headquarters of one of the biggest megacorps in the history of megacorps. It is preposterously high-end. Slick. Shiny. Gleaming. You think it keeps itself that way? No! Well, yes, because there are trillions of miniature robot-vacs, air purifiers, and dust- annihilation systems, but most of the polishing and buffing and trash-can-emptying is done the old-fashioned way. This place employs an army of cleaners and janitorials. An army. Forty-eight thousand of them, last time I checked.”
“I am Groot!”
“It sounds like a lot, but bear in mind the building houses almost half a billion workers. The janitorials have their own accommodation annex. It’s a tower block. A tower block. And get this, the tower block has its own janitorials. Janitors for janitors! I mean! And the janitors’ janitors have their own accommodation block, too, and—”
He pauses.
He sees the looks we are giving him.
“Okay, sorry,” he says, scruffing the back of his neck with a disconcertingly human-like hand. “I realize I was starting to sound like Recorder-boy there for a second—”
“Hey!” I object.
“Point is,” Rocket continues, “being janitors is perfect cover. They’re everywhere, and no one ever notices them. So suit up!”
He tosses a set of bright and shiny yellow plastic clothing at each one of us.
Reluctantly, we put them on.
“Caps and booties, too!” Rocket grins.
The garments are made from patented Timely Inc. “Form-fit” plastic, with a nanometric sizing control sewn into the label inside the overalls. By adjusting the control, we are able to enlarge or reduce each set of shiny yellow overalls to our individual physiques. Even Groot. Clearly, the Timely Inc. Janitorial Division employs quite a variety of species. The cap takes more work.
“Uh, Gammy?” Rocket says.
“What?” she asks. She has put the overall on over her bodysuit and adjusted the Form-fit to the very tightest it can go without splitting at the seams. It encases her like neon-yellow latex. I record this carefully. You know, just for historical authenticity.
“How can I put it?” Rocket thinks. “Okay, not that way. This way. We’re not supposed to be drawing attention to ourselves.”
“And?”
“No janitor should have booty that could stop traffic.”
“I like it like this.”
“Even so… “
She growls and adjusts the setting, making the overalls baggier. She still doesn’t look much like a janitor, especially with the way her cap is set coquettishly. But at least she no longer looks like a swim-suit model who has rolled in yellow gloss paint.
Disappointingly.
Rocket opens one of the cart’s garbage drums.
“Weapons in here,” he says. In go his unfeasibly large gun, Gamora’s swords and ripper pistol, and a heavy Nova Corps riot suppressor that Groot has borrowed from the prowl cruiser’s gun locker without a murmur of protest from this vehicle.
Rocket flips the drum’s lid shut.
“Okay,” he says, “here’s what we do. We mooch around, sweeping and polishing all nonchalant-like, but all the while we look for traces of this ‘Project 616’ malarky that the Kree Accuser-crazy was on about. Or any Recorder-type data. Remember, this 616 business is the key to universal control. It’s probably going to be in a big, red, important-looking folder.”
We hesitate.
“Kidding!” cries Rocket. “Oh, you people! Of course it’s not! Just keep your eyes peeled. This vehicle?”
“Yeah, baby?”
“Stay right here.”
“By your command, cool criminal-dude.”
“And don’t talk to anyone, okay?”
Silence.
“This vehicle?”
“Sorry, mate? Are you talkin’ to me? This vehicle is just an innocent run-of-the-mill Timely Inc. delivery courier, mindin’ its own business, sir, top of the mornin’ and please you kindly,” the automatic voice lisps in a strangled Xandarian accent.
We all sigh.
“Right,” says Rocket, snapping on a pair of form-fit yellow plastic gloves that immediately make his hands look even more disconcertingly human-like. “Let’s make like janitors, dust off, and clean the flark up.”
• CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR •
CLEANING UP
/> TIMELY Inc. Corporate Headquarters is even more horribly large inside than out. The sheer scale of it—the soaring atriums, the infinitely plunging and rising express elevators, the immense corridors and even more immense windows—beggars belief. And I say this as an instrument who has recorded many things of scale in his lifetime : the Cascades at God’s Fall, for instance. The fortifications at Maklu. The Gulf at Brink. The Fault. The sun-ball sphere of the Horusians. The toothbrush belonging to Ego, the Living Planet.
{halt expositional protocol}
—Forgive the levity, gentle reader. Once again, I am nervous. I tend to make jokes when I’m nervous, as you are no doubt well aware by now. That last one was an attempt at humor. Of course Ego the Living Planet doesn’t have a toothbrush. It was his waterpick.
{resume narrative mode}
We tread carefully. We make a show of not making a show. We occasionally stop to sweep, or mop, or burnish. It turns out Gamora is particularly scrupulous about wainscots. Groot deploys the cart’s “Shine-o-matic” buffer and does the floors. Rocket takes over this task when he realizes he can ride the Shine-o-matic around like a Segway. We quickly appreciate that we have to stop him doing this.
I keep my cap pulled down. I do not want to be recognized. This, after all, is the habitation of the people who want me very badly. I have entered the lion’s den.
We go about our business, pausing to listen in on the conversations of passing executives, or secretarial-pool staff waiting for elevators. Their vocabulary is frankly alarming. I didn’t know that “resolutionate” was a real word. Or that you could “solutionize” anything.
“Security men!” Rocket hisses, and we get to work with dusters and mops. Three Timely Inc. corporate security guards stroll by, their Timely Inc. Subduematic phase pistols conspicuously holstered at their waists.
“Good job, boys,” one remarks.
“Thank you, mate, sir, please you kindly,” lisps Rocket, in his panic attempting a bit of character acting.
“Hey,” says another, stopping. He looks at Gamora, who is working quite intently at the wainscot.
“I haven’t seen you around here before, sweetie-pudding,” he says. “You new?”
I sense she wants her swords. I sense, also, that she has the good sense not to reach for them. She gets up, smiles, and takes off her cap, letting her black locks spill out.
“Yeah, I’m new,” she replies, with a voice that would melt a cryogenic-suspension unit. “What’s your name?”
“Brango,” the officer says, immediately drawn. A tree, an android, and a Raccoonoid in bright-yellow, shiny overalls, and she’s the one he notices?
What am I saying? Of course she is.
“Second-Tier Security Sub-Technician Brango,” he adds, tapping his badge. Clearly, he is used to the rank impressing people. “You’re d’ast sweet, honey-scoop. You got a name?”
“Yes,” Gamora says.
“What is it, bundle-pie?”
“It’s…uhm…Aromag.”
“That’s a pretty name. Like an arrow and magazine clip, all in one. You sound all sortsa deadly.”
“You have no idea.”
“Say, you fancy meeting in the cafeteria after work? The one on five thousand and two?”
“Well,” says Gamora. “That’d be great.”
“What time do you get off?” the security officer asks.
“Exactly the same time, Second-Tier Security Sub- Technician Brango, as you do,” she replies.
Brango flushes.
“Heck,” he says. “I’ll see you there, then. I’ll buy you a beverage. They have these new things, you know? Manual Easification Curves. Zero loss of comfortable hand experience, and no scalding issues. That’s a promise.”
“Really? I cannot wait.”
“Me neither, fumble-curves. I’ll see you there. We’ll continuate this conversationalization later.” He flips her a confident “sayonara” salute.
“I cannot wait not to be scalded!” she calls after him.
The security guards pass on, though Brango keeps looking back over his shoulder until they are out of sight.
“Well, we got past that without incident,” Gamora says, returning to the wainscot.
Rocket gawps at her.
“Yeah, right. Why didn’t you just get your girls out and push them in his face?”
“I was acting. I was playing a role,” she replies.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, an’ please you kindly, sir, mate, matey boy,” she returns.
We trundle the cart on. Rocket simmers. Gamora smirks. Groot chuckles.
“Shut up,” Rocket says to me.
I realize that I was singing “Longing-Bongo Boogie” by the Kamodo All-Star Rhythm Monarchs.
“Sorry,” I say. “It’s stuck on repeat play.”
We arrive at a bank of elevators and decide to try another floor. A car arrives, and we step in. Four beings in shiny yellow plastic overalls stand inside around a janitorial cart. We descend in silence for a few moments. They keep eyeing us.
“So where you guys heading?” asks one of them gruffly.
“Uhm, floor four thousand and six,” replies Rocket cheerily.
“We’re rostered to that,” the being says, pulling out a clipboard. “See?”
“Oh,” says Rocket, clearly wishing he had a clipboard, too. “Four thousand and five, then.”
“That’s us, too.”
“Ah, flark,” laughs Rocket. “You know how it goes. Just another of those administrative mixups.”
“Eight years I’ve worked here,” says one of the others, “and there’s never been a mixup. Timely Convenience Management never makes a mixup. The rotas are posted hourly. What work room are you from?”
“Fourteen!” Rocket guesses frantically.
“I don’t know you guys,” says another of them. “I don’t recognize you.”
“Why would you?” asks Rocket. “So many of us!”
“Yeah, but we’re from workroom fourteen. We’d know you.”
“Of all the flarking numbers to pick…” Rocket whispers.
“Hey,” says Gamora. She reaches out and presses the “halt” stud that pauses the elevator car between floors. “Funniest thing. You guys will never guess what we found in the trash on nine-sixty today.”
“What?” asks one of the janitors.
“I’ll show you,” she says, removing the lid of one of our cart’s garbage drums. “It’s in here.”
SEVERAL executives are waiting for our car when it arrives. Of course, we washed down the elevator thoroughly while it was on “halt.” It was lucky, I have to say, that we had sponges and spray-solvents.
“Sorry, sorry,” Rocket says to the waiting executives as we emerge. “Technical fault.”
We are now pushing two carts. Both are heavier than before.
“See that?” Rocket says to us, indicating a wall floorplan. “The mail room. Just down the hall. That’s where I used to work. Of course, this place has hundreds of mail rooms, but they’re all the same. Great place to see what’s coming in and going out. Maybe we can grab ourselves a clue there. Whatcha think? Groot?”
“I am Groot.”
“Recorder-dude?”
“It seems…viable.”
“Aromag?”
“You’re not even funny ever,” she says.
We head for the mail room on floor four thousand and six.
Trouble isn’t waiting for us there.
But it certainly arrives promptly.
• CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE •
YOU'VE GOT MAIL!
THE Timely Inc. mail room on floor four thousand and six is, Rocket assures us, just like all the other mail rooms. It is vast. Physical mail waits for distribution in huge mesh racks. Digital mail throbs in monolithic server units, waiting to be routed. On shelves, there are bundles of twine, packing tape, and key-code readers.
“Smells like home,” Rocket smiles. “Come on.”
We probe arou
nd. Small sorting robots scurry by, ignoring us, carrying bundles of mail in their wiry arms.
“616, 616, 616…” Rocket mutters, searching. He has taken off his gloves.
“We’ll never find anything here,” says Gamora.
“I am Groot!” Groot declares. He is investigating the senior-executive sorting bin. He holds up a big, red, important-looking folder.
“You are kidding me,” Rocket says, rushing over. He rips open the sealed folder and reads. “Says…for the attention of Senior Vice Executive President (Special Projects) Odus Hanxchamp. Minutes of the meeting on blah blah blah…regarding cost implicationisms of the implementization of the Manual Easification Curve…flark, this isn’t it.”
I take the folder from his disconcertingly human-like hands and flip through it at rapid speed-read mode, my pico-processors on full.
“Don’t just waft it around like that, read the thing!” Rocket says.
“I have.”
“You have?”
“I have. There may be something in this. The minutes end with a note that all senior executives were then dismissed, so that only those involved in Senior Special Projects remained. Senior Special Projects clearance only. Subject of discussion: Project 616.”
“Flark! What else does it say?”
“Nothing. Clandestine fields were then amped up, and nothing was officially minuted.”
“Okay, what was his name? Hanxchamp? Honxchump? Find his mail bin!”
“Found it!” Gamora calls out.
There is a ton of mail in Hanxchamp’s mail bin. And a parcel. It is humanoid. We unwrap it. As we peel off the plastic, I feel a chill. I know what I’m going to see.
It is a Recorder unit. Recorder 489. He is deceased, but a “sustain” boot-system has been bolted to the side of his head to preserve his memory files energetically.
“You okay, bud?” asks Rocket.
“It’s…it’s inrigellian,” I reply, sickened.
“The docket says he’s to be routed to…access sub-eighty. There’s a security-clearance-code tag. Special transfer,” says Gamora. “What does that mean?”
“Sub-eighty?” Rocket ponders, scratching his ear. “This building only has eighty basement levels. There’s nothing under eighty.”