"And they have no contact whatsoever at work," Wolf questioned. "No conversation, no papers going back and forth?"
"She never comes into his office nor does she put letters or documents in his office. She doesn't visit him at his home. He never answers the phone at home. There's no way for them to communicate together."
"Nor can she come and visit him at home," Wolf continued. "Otto and Dieter have keys to the front door and open it when they arrive to pick up the general. I went through the house and looked at those doors. They can't be opened from the inside."
"So, he's a prisoner both at home and in his office."
"Plus they have the incriminating pictures. Mac would be aware that there's a bug in her reception area. The SODS would have told her just like they told her father. They have them completely under their control. I wonder how Mac and her father are communicating."
"They're communicating?"
"Count on it," Wolf said.
Back to the Table of Contents
Chapter 27
Izzy had spent the entire weekend surveilling an empty house. Same thing Monday. She was tempted to break in but any sleeper worth his salt would have a security system. She didn't want to be appearing on his cameras, even in disguise. She'd find her picture on the Internet. She could imagine the caption. Bitch from Hell moonlights as a thief.
Monday night, she mind-messaged TG and asked him if he could meet her in Surrey. He arrived about twenty minutes later and flopped down onto the roof next to her. Izzy told him about Zzyk's war against her. To her question if he could find the authors' computers through their IP addresses, TG said, "Not a chance." When she asked if he could hack into the computer storing her books and remove them, he said "Yes. But the books would be back up the next day. They'd know they were getting to you."
"Can you help me watch the houses? I need sleep and food."
"Yes. Or I can set up some of Will's drones. But you'd be wasting your time. The sleepers won't be coming back here."
"Why?"
"They're at war with you and that means they'll be hiding. I can help you break into the houses if you like."
TG and Izzy broke into both houses that evening. It took him some time, but TG disabled the security and they wandered through the house with no concern that they were being taped. No computers. No furniture. Nothing. Only some bills on the floor by the front door.
"Do you have any other leads? Work addresses?"
"No other leads," Izzy said. "Work addresses are not in the file. Perhaps the sleepers don't have a job."
"Probably the case. An Albertan nose would get their co-workers talking."
# # # # # # # #
March 2081 was a busy one for the Saskatoon military base because of the annual war games that they conducted on the 31st. These games were actually a simulated battle between the forces of evil (Zzyk) and the forces of good (Saskatchewan). The base's personnel were split into two groups, one group with the code name Eskimos, and the other named Riders. The code words were taken from an ancient rivalry between two football teams – the Edmonton Eskimos and the Saskatchewan Roughriders. The Eskimos would invade; the Roughriders would defend. This year, Mac would be in charge of the Eskimos; the base's second-in-command would lead the Roughriders. The general would be drunk in his office.
Will noticed nothing unusual in any of the drone data that month. Wolf watched the three SODs as best he could, but the base was in turmoil most of the time. On the day of the war games, Mac invaded half an hour early and caught the Riders in their locker room. The game was over before it started. Call it a 50-0 score. Afterwards, she met with all of the base's personnel in the hanger that usually held Saskatchewan's monster helicopters. She had used one of these as the Eskimo's flying command center and it was from there, high in the sky, that she had directed her forces. But now the hanger was empty of copters and Mac spoke bluntly to the Saskatchewan forces about their performance. She started with the question "What makes you think that an enemy is going to follow the rules when he decides to invade? You officers all know what Zzyk is like. Just because you believe that he's not going to invade us doesn't mean that we're safe."
Will and Wolf watched, somewhat awestruck, as a sixteen year old civilian clinically dissected every failing of the two sides in the war games and the forces took it without a murmur. Head up, eyes front, shoulders back, and body rigid. When she was finished, Mac dismissed the formation for five minutes – the soldiers to get their full packs, the support forces to get buckets and brushes. One group went on a 12-hour forced march and the other went to clean the barracks.
"How'd she get away with that?" Will asked.
"Dunno," Wolf replied. "Have you seen the SODs? They weren't in the group that went on the march."
About six hours later, the SODs were back on the base with the copter they said that they had used to trail the marchers and keep them on their toes. Curiously, they returned to the base from an entirely different direction than the marchers did hours later. When Mac passed Sven on the runway tarmac, she didn't look at him or say anything.
Sven did though. "Nice job, rookie. What say you and I get a drink?"
"Not going to happen," Mac replied.
# # # # # # # #
"TG, it's not going to happen," Izzy said from the roof of the male sleeper's house where they had resumed a hopeless watch.
"What's not going to happen?"
"I'm not going to give up"
"On finding the sleepers?"
"That, yes. On Will and me. On our war with Zzyk. On everything. I've decided that I'm not going to fall apart again. Ever."
"You should come back to the compound. You need sleep. Food."
"Where's Will staying?"
"He's sleeping in the ship. He said that you could have the house."
Izzy nodded, gave TG a kiss on his cheek, thanked him, and flickered away. What are you going to do now, Izzy?
# # # # # # # #
Time-travel meant that you never had to say Sorry for making a mistake. Both Wolf and Will had missed the SODs slipping out of camp. No worries. They went back in time, caught them the second time and followed their monster helicopter for three hours in a southeasterly direction. It landed in an empty field somewhere in North Dakota and Sven watched as Otto and Dieter unloaded an impressively large number of crates. The SODs waited until six copters appeared on the horizon and then they left. Almost certainly back to the base. Wolf and Will had sufficient time before the six copters arrived to examine the crates for markings and even to lift one or two to gauge their weight. All invisibly in case the approaching copters had long-range telescopes.
"Armaments," Wolf said as they retreated from the drop zone.
"Agreed," Will said. "Small arms, ammunition, possibly grenades for personal use, not for army use?"
"Probably. We should follow them so that we can watch them open up the crates."
They didn't have to follow. The six copters landed and disgorged twelve men who opened the crates on the spot. They were not in uniforms. The contents of the crates were shifted so that six roughly equal portions were created and these were loaded into the six copters. All six lifted into the sky and headed in slightly different directions.
"Personal arms, ammunition, and some explosives" Will confirmed their expectations. "Should we follow?"
"Did you catch the significance of the six copters going in six different directions?" Wolf asked.
"Huh?"
"If they were going to one central location, they'd sort out the shares there, not here. These people are from six different organizations that trust each other enough to meet and so they come to the drop zone as a group. Then they go home alone. They don't trust each other enough to come individually and take their share."
"Right. I see that."
"Notice anything unusual?"
"They had the same copters? That would be unusual for six different organizations?"
"Right. It means
that they buy their copters as a group, just like they buy their small arms as a group. They have some sort of central organization, but it's not military. Did you notice anything really unusual?"
Pause. "No."
"The SODs didn't stick around long enough to get paid."
Back to the Table of Contents
Chapter 28
Izzy had a troubled night but managed eventually to fall asleep. She rose at noon and was at the kitchen table, eating toast, when she saw this announcement and mind-messaged its contents to TG.
Coming October 12, Trevor Tuttle's new biography of Izzy. Tuttle has included pictures that he took of Izzy during a week-long orgy when she showed him personally how slutty she is. See pictures of naked Izzy in action. Pre-order "Satan's Slut" now!
TG arrived a few minutes later. "My naked body is going to be all over the Internet in three days," Izzy said and pointed him at the announcement while she stood up to get more bread. "Toast? Coffee?" she asked.
"Just ate," TG said. "It won't be your body that they'll see," he tried to reassure.
"You know that. I know that. Thousands won't."
"You OK?"
"I'm not going to fall apart, TG. I absolutely refuse to fall apart. Never again."
"Trying to keep busy by planning the war?" TG motioned to the papers that were strewn all over the kitchen. Will's reports. "How's that going?"
"Horribly. But Will was right that I needed to see everything at once. I just can't concentrate right now."
"You could find those authors within twenty-four hours, you know. With time-travel."
"Too risky. I'd rather have people see my body than jeopardize the future of thousands of people."
"So why'd you call me over?"
"You've been talking with Will. How's he doing?"
"Working on his drones."
"That's not what I meant."
"You'll have to ask him that yourself. I'm not taking sides."
"OK. Just wondering."
"I should tell you this though, Izzy. I encouraged Will to become more assertive. He was becoming increasingly unhappy with you. I thought it might be a way for him to cut down on your bossiness and you guys would get along better."
"You think I'm bossy?"
"Everyone knows that you boss Will around. How could you not know that about yourself?"
"So, you are taking sides?"
"No. I also told Will that he shouldn't be keeping secrets from you. He ignored me."
"I can't believe that Will didn't realize how badly he had hurt me."
# # # # # # # #
"I have a question for you," TG said. "Franklin's trial. Are you going to tell people what Stu's sentence was? Yollie told me that you hadn't told her."
"I haven't and I won't. We don't want the kids becoming upset."
"At the trial, you put your Zorro boots up on the table and said that you'd like to use them on Franklin's hands. Is that because he groped you?"
"You figured that out?"
"Pretty obvious. Have you told Will about that groping yet?"
"No."
"Have you told Will why you had those condoms that you used to escape from your cell?"
"What are you doing, TG?"
"Just wondering why it's alright for you to keep secrets from Will but it's not alright for Will to keep secrets from you."
"Taking sides?"
"Nope. Just wondering about the double standard."
"The trial has to be kept a secret for good reason."
"Agreed. But having a lot of condoms with you? Isn't that something that two lovers would talk about?"
"I was going to tell him eventually."
"Will was going to tell you eventually too. He kept his time travel searches secret because he wanted to help Wolf and knew that if he didn't keep them a secret, Wolf would be badly hurt. That sounds like a noble reason for keeping something secret for a period of time."
"You ever keep a secret from Yollie, TG?"
"I'm doing that right now, Izzy. She's never going to know what you and I are talking about today because that might hurt you, and I won't hurt members of my family."
# # # # # # # #
The discussion had moved on to talking about Will. TG had told Izzy that he knew some things about Will that she'd need to know if she were going to bring the two of them back together.
"Will's life is bound by some black and white thinking. He believes very strongly that people who are in love never argue and they never have any negative thoughts about the other person. When he started stressing out about your bossiness, he took that to mean that he obviously didn't love you. When you had public arguments with him – that told him that you didn't love him. He agreed to the break-up because he had concluded that the two of you weren't in love. Since he'd never be able to put up with your bossiness, that told him he didn't love you. If it wasn't love, it must have been lust. All of that fuzzy thinking came because he has a view of love that doesn't exist outside of fiction books."
"Will doesn't believe that married couples fight and argue," TG continued. "He's never seen that from Hank and Yolanda, so he has nothing else to go on. People are madly in love and never say or think anything critical about the other person, or they're not in love. He doesn't stand up to you because he needs to love you in that black and white way of thinking that he has. So he buries any bad feelings that he might have towards you immediately. He doesn't know how to argue with a loved one. Neither do you, by the way. If you're going to get back together, he has to change that thinking. You have to change too. You guys have to find a way for the two of you to argue without him concluding that you don't love him and without you having a hairy fit and not talking to him for weeks."
"He says that he can't think quickly enough to argue against me."
"That's part of it and you'll have to solve that. But Will has to recognize that having temporary feelings of frustration or unhappiness about a partner doesn't mean that he's not in love."
"Anything else I need to know?"
"Will doesn't believe that he's good enough for you. He believes that his long silences and thinking trances are so weird that nobody would want to put up with him. That's another reason why he agreed to the break-up. He felt that it was inevitable that you wouldn't love him."
"That's crazy."
"Not from his perspective. You know how he grew up. All alone in his room for fifteen years. You grew up with people hating you. He grew up with kids his own age not having any interest whatsoever in him. He had no physical or emotional contact with anyone until he met you. Why wouldn't his childhood experience scar him as badly as it scarred you?"
# # # # # # # #
"How'd you learn so much about Will and me, TG?"
"Watching. Listening. Trying to figure out human behaviour. That's a constant challenge for me. It's stimulating. Computer programming is mostly tedious once I've figured out how to attack the problem. There is one thing that I don't know about you though, Izzy. Would you mind a sensitive question?"
"I'm going to see my face on someone else's naked body on Friday. How could your question be worse?"
"Why are you so frightened about time-travel? And don't tell me it's because of the danger because your battles always have danger in them and you aren't too scared to plan them or fight them. You're frightened about this. Why?"
# # # # # # # #
Back at the Wilizy, Will was giving a final test to the drone that he had upgraded to carry a payload. He planned to make about fifty of these, time permitting. The reader can think of these as his short-range drones. Will was also going to make some long-range drones, time permitting.
For the short-range drones, Will had soldered two wires to a double pinky ring battery unit and had enclosed all of that inside a lead blob. Lead was easy to mold into different shapes and Will didn't care if the lead shielding looked blobby or not. The wires protruding out of the lead blob would connect the batteries to the drone's body.
>
The power unit attached to the spidery-like body gave the drone the ability not only to crawl and fly, but to also carry a payload and spin it. Everything in the test had worked as well as could be expected. Will had some doubts whether the payload could be distributed widely enough, but he had no time to re-conceptualize. He needed time for mass production and for training Wilizy fighters.
# # # # # # # #
Izzy had asked TG for a break. She needed to think about what he had asked and whether she could tell him. She had never told anyone about this before, not even Will. It was at that point that Izzy realized that TG had been dead on with his comment about a double standard. She had never shared this with Will. She had kept it a secret. And it wasn't for a noble reason. Actually, she had kept more secrets from Will than he had kept from her. She came back to the kitchen within a few minutes – willing to tell all.
"When I was captured by Zzyk before you joined us, he kept me in a small room that was connected to his office by a video unit. He talked with me regularly. He attacked me verbally, trying to force me to tell him where Will was. He called me Will's slut, offered to let me be the paid whore for the entire executive branch, called my grandmother a prostitute, showed me fake pictures of her in action, and when that didn't work, he tortured my mother in front of me with brain-band attacks. I hadn't been ready for anything like this and I handled it badly. Very badly. So badly that I was afraid of anyone finding out how pathetic I had been. I never told anyone what had happened. I've kept that a secret from Will even to now. Your comment about me having a double standard was absolutely right. I kept the secret out of shame; not wanting anyone to find out. This was not a noble secret. It was a pathetic-hiding secret. I'm going to tell Will my pathetic secrets."
"Sounds like a good topic for a first meeting."
"When I look back at what Zzyk did to me, I can't believe that I had been so..."
"Vulnerable?"
"Yes. Being called a slut now would mean nothing to me. I had trouble watching my mother being tortured, but I got through it. Zzyk had one of my former students murdered and I got through that."
"And Zzyk has to keep increasing the savagery of the attack to have an impact?"
"Yes. If he gave me a day in between attacks, I would be ready for him. I did get frightened, but that went away if I had time to think about what was going to happen to me. Experiencing it once would prepare me for the second time."