Three Days in April (14 page)

“No,” she says. “The story you read in your Bible is many, many thousands of years removed from the truth. There was no tree of knowledge.”

I look over at her. She's grinning.

“So what's the point?” I ask.

“My point is this,” Aaliyah says. “The story I have told you is not thousands of years removed from the truth. I learned it first in the mother tongue. The story I have told you
is
the truth.”

T
he storm announces itself with a crack of thunder and a wave of wind-­driven hail that slants in under the porch roof and clatters at our feet. Aaliyah has to shout to be heard over the burst of noise.

“I believe that it is time to return to the sitting room.”

She stands and holds the door for me, then closes it behind us. The sudden silence as the door latches leaves my ears ringing.

“Be seated,” she says. “I will join you in a moment.”

I step into the sitting room, push a cushion against the wall and sit. I'm adjusting slowly to life with Aaliyah, but I do very deeply miss chairs.

The cushions are orange, yellow and red today. The colors make a cheery contrast to the weather. I pick up my phone from the table. I have no idea why I keep carrying it around with me. It hasn't worked since Tariq brought me here. This reminds me that I also have no idea what's been happening in the world for the past two days. I want to talk to Terry. I want to talk to Tariq.

“You must not,” says Aaliyah.

I look up. She's seated across from me, with a pot of tea in her hands. Two cups sit on the table beside her.

“How do you do that?”

She smiles.

“Perhaps you will learn. This is what we must discuss now. But first, you must put aside any thought of leaving my home with that device in your hand.”

I look down at the phone. No ser­vice. It's mocking me.

“Would it really be so bad?” I ask. “I just want to check the news, and maybe talk to my sister.”

“Well,” she says. “You know more of these things than I. Tariq tells me that there is an excellent chance that NatSec is trying to locate you right now. How long would it take them to do so once your phone returned to the network?”

And she's right. I do know this.

“You have no idea what it's like,” I say, “being cut off like this.”

“You are like an addict denied her drugs, are you not?”

I slide the phone across the table.

“It's probably best if you hold onto this.”

She picks it up, and slips it into a pocket.

“So,” she says. “I must ask you a question now. When you came here, I asked Tariq if you would convert. He forbade me to ask again. But he is not here, and I am not one to be forbidden. I have told you many truths today. I have taught you much about the world, and much about the faith. So now, I ask again. Will you convert?”

Her face is blank, but there's a tension in her fingers where they grip the teapot that I haven't seen before. I look down, then back up into her eyes.

“What would Tariq say?” I ask. “He's told me that he abandoned the faith. If I were to convert, would he abandon me?”

“No,” she says. “Tariq has not abandoned the faith. This is something you must understand before deciding. Once the faith has been embraced, it cannot be abandoned, any more than a bell can be un-­rung. This is as true for us now as it was for the mother-­of-­all. Tariq would no doubt be furious to know that we are speaking of this, but he will not leave you, no matter what you decide.

Her eyes are half closed now, and her finger traces tiny circles on the teapot's side.

“What would it take?” I ask after a long silence. “Are there rites and rituals? Is there a catechism to be learned?”

Aaliyah smiles.

“No,” she says. “No robes, no rituals, no ceremonies. No tattoos or brands or sacrificing of animals.”

She lifts the lid from the teapot, and carefully fills both cups to the rims. She slides one of them across the table.

“All you need do, is to accept the Gift of the Moon.”

I reach out, and wrap my hand around the teacup. A wave of nausea rolls over me.

“Decide now,” says Aaliyah. She lifts her cup to her lips, and drinks it down.

I lift the cup. The tea is thick and dark as molasses. It smells of an alkaline something, strong enough to sting my nose.

“You say this bell can't be unrung,” I say. “But if it were possible to set the faith aside, would you do it?”

Aaliyah shrugs.

“You say your dog Ajax was happy. Would you trade the life you have now for his?”

I bring the cup to my lips, and drink.

F
irst comes pain, a twisting knife in my gut that doubles me over. I clutch at my belly and gasp for air as my eyes lose focus and a rising roar fills my ears. This lasts for what seems like hours, like days, until the pain fades, and an electric tingle runs up my spine, then down my arms and legs and back again. I slowly push myself upright. Tears trickle down my cheeks, and from the spreading warmth in my crotch I'm guessing that either I'm bleeding out or I've wet myself.

I look down at my hands. They're strangely out of focus. I rub the tears from my eyes, blink them clear and look up at Aaliyah. She's smiling.

And then, like Saul on the road to Damascus, the scales fall away, and I see. I see the city laid out below me from ten thousand feet. At the same time, I see individual ­people going about their days, walking and talking and sitting and sleeping in parks and cars and offices and homes. All of this is background, but with a thought I focus in on one bit of imagery—­a boy, maybe fifteen or sixteen, huddled in the doorway of a building on Light Street, waiting for the rain to ease up. And still, I can see Aaliyah watching me with a widening grin on her face.

I'm trying to understand how I'm processing all of that when what looks like a chat box on my phone pops up, floating in the air beside Aaliyah's head. At first it's just a blank white rectangle, but after a moment a message appears:

Sauron's Eye:

 

13. GARY

C
harity is, as it turns out—­aside from being a bar floozie who will traipse home after any idiot who happens to save her from a deranged gunman—­a woman of refinement and good taste. She takes to
SpaceLab
like a booze hound to beer nuts, laughing at all the right places, and never giving me that ‘what the hell are you watching' look that I've come to know so well.

Tariq, on the other hand, is a philistine. He perches on the edge of the couch and fidgets through the first three clips, never laughing, and occasionally trying to interrupt. I studiously ignore him.

Terry has been gone now for almost an hour. I'm honestly not sure what's going on with Anders. For the last year and a half at least, he's been in a committed relationship with his right hand. Now the world is ending, and suddenly he's got one woman in his bedroom and another who apparently would have been if he were slightly less of an idiot.

Not that I'm bitter, mind you.

The clip we're watching is a classic. The captain and Science Officer Scott spend the entire episode on the bridge, debating the pros and cons of being absorbed into a tentacled hive mind that's attached itself to the station. On the plus side, the captain points out that the hive mind takes care of all your excretory needs, and also that the only attractive woman on the station has already been absorbed. Science Officer Scott concedes the points, but counters that the hive mind handles excretions by recycling them back into your mouth, and that Communications Officer Keiko is much less attractive with a tentacle coming out of her ass. In the end, of course, both arguments are moot, because the captain puts his drink down on the self-­destruct button and blows up the station.

“Wow,” says Charity. “Where has this been my whole life?”

“
SpaceLab
is like the Grand Canyon, or the Mona Lisa,” I say. “It's always been there, just waiting for you to discover it.”

She giggles. I'm not ordinarily a fan of giggling, but Charity giggles with panache.

“Charity,” says Tariq. “Perhaps now you might give us some privacy? Gary and I have important matters to discuss.”

She breaks into a full laugh now, and I join in. Tariq looks back and forth between us. His jaw is clenched, and if he were really an evil wizard, I'm pretty sure we'd both be toads.

“Gary,” he says. “Please. Time is running short, and there is danger for you as well.”

Charity looks at me, one eyebrow raised.

“Is this guy serious? Am I interrupting a secret mission?”

“Sort of,” I say. “He wants me to break into NatSec's servers, and delete a video of his girlfriend being carried out of Hagerstown on the back of a giant bat.”

“Gary—­” says Tariq.

“Oh, cram it,” I say. “We're not gonna do it, because, as I have already explained several times, it can't be done. Anyway, Charity's not NatSec. And even if she was, they can't drop a crowbar on you for fantasizing. Although, now that I think about it, they probably can drop a crowbar on you for knowing that your girlfriend got out of Hagerstown alive. Charity—­you're not NatSec, are you?”

She laughs again. Her giggle is sweet, but she laughs like a hyena. I find it doesn't bother me, though, as long as I stay focused on what it does to her breasts.

“No,” she says. “I'm not NatSec. I used to date a NatSec guy, though. Maybe he could help?”

“I do not think your ex-­boyfriend will help us,” says Tariq. “I suspect he might call in the crowbar Gary is so concerned about.”

“You're probably right,” she says. “He does love his crowbars. So I guess it's just us, huh?”

“Us?” I say.

“Sure. You let me in on your secret plans. Now you've got to let me help. Otherwise, I'll go tell my ex.”

She's kidding. I think.

“Look,” I say. “There are no plans here. For the third time, there is no way to do what Tariq wants to have done.”

“Why not?”

I roll my eyes.

“Start with the fact that he wants to crack NatSec in the first place. Their budget is bigger than the GDP of Norway, and a big part of it goes to dataspace security.”

“Pffft,” says Charity. “That's just money. You're brilliant, right?”

I shrug.

“Yeah, that's true. However, all their data gets mirrored to their warm site in Chantilly. That's physically isolated from the public networks. The only way to get the data back out from there would be to insert a virtual agent into their external nets, and have it persist there long enough to be mirrored. They comb through their data very, very carefully before they mirror anything over. That's the part that I don't believe can be done.”

Tariq is staring at the floor, his hands flexing rhythmically. He looks up.

“What if you had physical access to the server farm in the Chantilly facility?”

I laugh. Tariq meets my eyes without blinking.

“Wait,” I say. “Are you serious?”

“I am,” says Tariq. “If you had physical access to their servers, would you be able to do this?”

I take a moment to think about that.

“Well,” I say finally. “Speaking hypothetically, if I had physical access to the servers, and some time to work with them without being shot or stabbed or anally electrocuted . . . yeah, I might have a shot at it. I'd want to talk to Inchy first, to see if he has any pointers on breaking their firewalls. If I could put some of his code into one of my cracker avatars, I'd give myself even odds of being able to pull it off.”

“So,” says Charity. “Are we a go on this?”

I laugh again.

“No, Charity. We are not a go. I think I mentioned that we were speaking hypothetically. Chantilly is the heart of the panopticon, and I am not a ninja. There is no possible way that I can get physical access to NatSec's server farm.”

Tariq looks at Charity, then back at me.

“I can,” he says.

Sir Munchalot:

Sir Munchalot:

Angry Irish Inch:

Sir Munchalot:

Sir Munchalot:

Angry Irish Inch:

Sir Munchalot:

Angry Irish Inch:

Sir Munchalot:

Sir Munchalot:

Angry Irish Inch:

Sir Munchalot:

Angry Irish Inch:

Sir Munchalot:

Angry Irish Inch:

Sir Munchalot:

Angry Irish Inch:

Sir Munchalot:

Sir Munchalot:

Angry Irish Inch:

Sir Munchalot:

Angry Irish Inch:

Sir Munchalot:

Angry Irish Inch:

Sir Munchalot:

Angry Irish Inch:

Sir Munchalot:

Angry Irish Inch:

Sir Munchalot:

Angry Irish Inch:

Sir Munchalot:

Angry Irish Inch:

Sir Munchalot:

Angry Irish Inch:

Sir Munchalot:

Angry Irish Inch:

Sir Munchalot:

Angry Irish Inch:

Sir Munchalot:

Angry Irish Inch:

Sir Munchalot:

Angry Irish Inch:

“B
efore we go any farther,” I say, “we should probably discuss payment terms.”

“This is true,” says Charity. “Gary needs to be able to pay his subcontractors.”

“I only have one subcontractor,” I say.

She looks confused.

“I thought you said you were getting help from one of your friends?”

I nod.

“Right. Inchy. That's my subcontractor.”

“So am I a full partner, then?”

We're sitting around the breakfast table in the kitchen. Anders called in a pizza and four liters of soda after the storm quieted down, and we're passing around cups and slices.

“No,” I say. “You are not a full partner. You're more of an unpaid intern.”

She shakes her head.

“I don't think so. I've already provided you several valuable ser­vices.”

“Such as?”

“Well, for starters, not having my ex-­boyfriend come here and kill you all.”

“She makes a good point,” says Anders. “You should probably pay the lady.”

Tariq scrapes the cheese off of his pizza, and leaves it in a greasy lump on his plate. Terry raises one eyebrow. Tariq shrugs. Terry picks up his cheese, and pops it into her mouth.

“I thought we had agreed that you have as much stake in this as we do,” says Tariq.

“That may be,” I say. “But as Charity says, I have to pay my subs. Also, I think my liability here is a lot smaller than yours. You need to erase any record that NatSec has of Elise being alive in Hagerstown on Sunday afternoon. I just need to make sure that there's no record that she was in my house. That's a much easier job. If you want me to focus on that and forget about the video, then I guess we can call it square.”

Tariq scowls. Terry takes another slice of pizza.

“Fine,” she says. “How much?”

“Well,” I say, “that's partially dependent on how much Bar Floozie here intends to extort from me.”

Charity shrugs.

“Five thousand?”

“Done,” I say. “Inchy's gonna want more like twenty-­five. Ordinarily I'd need something similar, but I'll credit you with the work I'd need to do to save my own ass. Forty grand total sounds about right. Does that work for you two?”

Terry looks at Tariq. He leans back in his chair and sighs.

“I think we have little leverage to negotiate,” he says. “If this is your price, then we will pay it.”

“Excellent,” I say. “Make the transfer, and I'm on the job.”

“Wait,” says Terry. “You're expecting us to pay in advance?”

“Well, yeah,” I say. “Tariq's apparently going to break into the most secure facility in North America. I'm pretty sure if I don't get my money up front, I'm not going to get it at all.”

“He also makes a good point,” says Anders.

Terry shoots him a poisonous look.

“Shut up, Anders.”

Anders grins. I glance at Charity. She catches my eye and winks.

“Okay,” she says. “Are we a go now?”

“Yes,” I say. “I believe we are a go.”

M
y fabber has just spit out a pass card that Inchy assures me is NatSec coded and keyed to Tariq's biometrics, when a chat frame pops up in my field of view.

Argyle Dragon:

Drew P. Wiener:

Fenrir:

It's an audio file. I blink to stream.