Call Before You Dig - Part 4 of the Neverland Disorder, a Detective Kelli Hench Mystery

I put one hand on his back, one foot in front of the other, and somehow, by fate, by grace of God, but surely not by any native ability but sheer bullheaded determination, I didn't put my face into the gravel. I got us to the car, and him into the back of it. When I closed the door, I leaned up against the side of it. Where I could watch the trailer. Where I could breathe what little clean air the fading daylight vouchsafed me.

Where I could not puke, for just five breaths, now six, now seven. I could ignore the nerves and the shakes and I could by God not throw up.

"Big time killer, right?" the FBI suit asked me. "Guy's a big timer, made the New York by-God Times, and he's begging you to put a bullet between his eyes and make it all go away."

Yeah.

"You ok?" the suit continued.

No. "Yeah."

The suit's named Willard Mason Trevanian. Former ground pounder, psych degree and law degree. He's a mensch.

"Kelli," he said.

I turned to look at him. Somehow or another.

His face is wide, pushed-flat nose that helps him look like George Foreman. Will's in on the joke, he's even got a signed picture with the big man on the desk next to his wife's. Two of them like long lost cousins, all smiles.

Will doesn't smile now, he's still working. "Don't forget this. Hold onto it, hard as it sounds right now." He held out his hand, not as big as the champ's but still big enough I had to make sure I didn't get my skinny bones crushed grabbing it. Will waited 'til I grabbed it, then he used it to ease me up a little. "There's no such thing as an easy case."

We'd stood there. Him across from me, between the sights of the gun. "Pull it, you know you want to."

So I had.

After I shifted the barrel, just a little to the right, so the bullet passed between his shoulder and his ear. "On your face, just like I said." And he'd done it and just like that the whole thing was done. Except for the part where I had to stand there and wait for the shakes to finish.

Their faces passed through my mind while the nerves in my legs caught up to the necessary. Seven children. Rodrick Washington. Menna Luongo. Tracy Shepherd. Geno LeGuin. Amos Turner. Jeffery Modesto. William Benne. Seven young faces. And the families, the family they'd all become in the interminable months between William's disappearance and when I shoved the man who called himself Septimus into the back of the cruiser.

Ten years before Peter Pan entered our life. I'd moved over to this cold-case job just five months before, that's when I found the first set of folders. Forensics degree and the academy and ride a beat for a year, then ten years past the detective label and there I was. Here we all were.

How'd we all get here?

Rod and Menna, Tracy, Geno, these were the faces I knew only from a pile of folders on my predecessor's desk. "Your first job is to clear these old cases," my new boss told me. "Chris left us a parting gift, to go along with the finger."

That was the picture of Christopher Simmons' middle finger, the one taped to the door. He'd slapped it up there on his way to retirement. The stack of folders were the cherry on the sundae, I guess, the acknowledgment of the only truth.

There'd always be another case.

I cleared those folders, one by one, but somehow or another there was always another one coming in. The lost, the case that didn't get solved, some murders, some burglaries, some of this and that. The weird and the wild and the just plain "Didn't fit anywhere else."

Amos's case turned up for what eventually became familiar reasons. No one could connect his disappearance to anything that made any sense.

I still come into the office the way I did then, when the world is working on normal shift anyway. Wander up the stairs because it's likely to be the only real exercise I get that day, huff and puff and remind myself that I really should do better. Set the cup of coffee down next to the phone and dig for my notes from the day before.

Then pass through any folders that might have drifted my way overnight. Don't get me wrong, I don't get a case every night, because my colleagues all know their business. Most of the overnight mail is the same thing that comes into the email box: HR paperwork, memos from working cases, the day to day business.

Amos's face stared up at me. A school picture, like most kids the most recent image available.

Twelve. He's twelve, maybe thirteen at the most. Why do I know this?

Because I'd been taking my reading home, that's why. I picked up Amos's folder, paged through it, looked for the basics. A walker, he'd left school like normal, walking home, latchkey kid just old enough Mom and Dad felt he could handle the responsibility. He didn't make it home. Simple as that, and there were no skeletons in the family closet, no bad neighbor stories or skulking vans or anything the detectives and the beat cops could find to go somewhere with.

Why'd I guess his age? I reached for the other folders, four of them, not in a row because this morning was the first time I'd put them all together. Rod's folder was in my bag, so was Geno's but I had to hunt for his. Tracy's lay on my desk, I'd seen that one last week, Menna's was back in the file cabinet because I'd needed to rotate a little. Were there others here, other folders and pictures?

No. I stopped and went through Chris's stack of leave-behinds, one by one, and these were the only kids he'd left me. Four other disappearances.

Geno, another latchkey kid, and walker. His teachers hadn't known that. Tracy, she'd taken the Y's van from school, she only walked home from the Y Tuesdays and Thursdays, single mom a nurse she'd had that kind of shift but "Tracy was pretty good about it."

Rod was the slightly odd one out. Mother and father at odds with each other, divorced and Mom had a new husband, Dad wasn't there yet and he was the one lived close to school. Not close enough to walk though, so Rod hopped the bus and rode for a few blocks, then got down and went to Dad's apartment to wait 'til Mom finished her day and came by to pick him up.

Mom and Dad might have been at odds, but they were just elbows up, the legal business and the divorce fresh enough the wounds hadn't scarred over. They managed it well enough for Mom to drive by her ex's apartment every day.

Different neighborhoods, different schools. Midtown Amos, Geno from the Heights, out Westheimer for Menna and Tracy but different schools, the Fifth Ward for Rod.

All of them in September. Rod and Geno two years past, Tracy and Menna last year, Amos just four months ago.

I had a pattern, was it real?

I learned something then, but it might not matter as much these days. Then, the Chronicle was moving online, one of the first big papers to do it, but their archives were still dusty microfilm. I went to their library to put my pieces together.

The reporter showed up at my office three days later. DeJuana Rusch, ten years older and more cynical than I, and she wanted to know what I'd found.

How she hadn't already put it together I'll never know, except like us the news crews were always scrambling to match the bits to the picture frame they'd come from. "I don't have anything, yet."

"You didn't come to our library for nothing, detective."

And I hadn't. So I told her; I forgot to ask her to keep it off the record. Which is why I ended up with a boss sitting in my office, complaining about the headline the Chronicle graced us with. "Houston PD On the Trail of A Serial Kidnapper: Why'd It Take So Long?"

"You'd better be sure of this, Kelli. Five months in and you've got the paper breathing down my neck already."

Considering he'd parked me on the cold case desk to keep me out of the way of the rest of his crew... "Lieutenant, I didn't know she'd go running off to write something like this."

I have to give Penrose this much credit. He didn't keep griping about it. He just warned me. "Next time a reporter comes to visit, the first thing you tell them is?"

"Off the record?"

"Exactly." And he left me alone to keep putting pieces back together.

Though I did have to buy him lunch. "For running interference. The Chief called me first thing this morning, right after he got off the phone with the Mayor. They both know this wasn't your fault, but that means they're paying attention now. If you get anywhere with this, don't let my phone stay quiet."

I give credit to DeJuana, as well, because her story never once brought up the term "killer". Not yet, that would come soon enough.

And in the meantime, she was the one with the parents calling her. And Penrose. They didn't put my name into the ring until later.

When we found Amos and Tracy.

The Bayou City. They run through the place, the still waters. Always there beneath and alongside the roads. Ready to flood when the rains come. Ready to catch what people hide away.

Some breaks happen because we make them. Pull at the strings until something comes into the light, and we practice watching and listening for those moments. Others happen through nothing but accident. We were in the middle of a rain year, rainy few years, spring fronts that just wouldn't pass us by without putting down two, three, five inches of rain. The flood gauges on the roadways got a workout that year.

I'd moved into a new apartment that summer. Just up the road from Buffalo Bayou, close enough to walk to the bat bridge. Close enough so that when the call came in, Penrose knew which of his detectives could get there soonest.

They were chained together. The spring floodwaters had washed the bucket of concrete loose from the bottom, wherever they'd gone in. We had to wait for the identity folks to nail it down, but I didn't have any doubt that I'd be adding another piece to my puzzle.

"Did he keep her?" Penrose asked me. "All those months, did he hold her and wait?"

"He, Lieutenant?" I wasn't ready to go there, not quite yet. Sure, I knew the odds, but we didn't have anything that pointed that way.

"Call it a placeholder until you find more information, Kelli."

I could accept that. "You're not pulling me away for someone else to take over?"

He was halfway out the door. DeJuana hadn't waited to file her next story; the Times would file theirs the next day. Not a headline, not national news yet, just an A3, but the beat was picking up. "Tell me again when the first kid went missing? How long?"

"Two and a half years."

"And you're the first one to notice?"

I didn't answer that.

"No, Kelli. They're your kids. Do right by them." And he left to go mind the phones.

So that's when I called the FBI. Kidnapping being a big part of their business; the serial killer thing, they're the ones with the patience and the institutional memory. Problem being, while I had the history and the case studies in my memory, I didn't have a phone number or a name to contact. I worked the phone tree until I landed Will Trevanian's number.

"You've got a pattern of missing kids, and now you've got a body."

Two, but ok. "That sums it up."

"I can't really solve your case for you, detective."

Sure, but one can hope, right? "I'm assuming you're here for ear-bending, ideas..."

"Match-ups if I have them. You got it. And you know I'll have to fly down and pretend we did all the hard work, when you finally do catch the killer?"

"If they pay somebody to take the pictures and give the quotes, where do I send the reporter that's barking up my tree?" Now that I had him on the line...

I got the laugh I was looking for. "There's a practical limit. At least this way that reporter doesn't know you've got the feds on side. Keep me in the loop, will ya?"

I could do that. I'd have to if I wanted someone else doing the institutional clog dance for me.

Trevanian made me pay for it. My homework arrived a week after the first phone call. By bulk mail, the folders came in ten at a time. I think I've still got them all, probably in the bottom drawer of my first real file cabinet, the one I ended up putting in about a year later to handle all the folders I'd built up.

They weren't light reading. Trevanian sent me the ones who went after kids. He also sent me the ones who went after old folks, only boys, only girls... the list goes on. If there's a group, something to focus on, from looks to color to language or country or...

There's someone out there who's obsessed enough to target them. Trevanian didn't spare me. "You can't afford to miss a connection."

"What about the lighter crimes?" Cons, people who go into old folks' homes and walk out with a couple hundred grand and half a dozen heartbroken, bankrupt, lonely victims behind them. "Or, well..."

"The rapists?" He wouldn't let me hide behind myself, either. "Those are a lot harder to take in, Kelli."

Considering the autopsy pictures I currently had sitting on my desk, that was a little much to fathom.

"I mean, for every real serial killer, there's a hundred, maybe two hundred rapists. In practical terms, that group's a lot harder to get understanding of. And a lot more varied."

"We don't have anything else to go on yet. What if I miss because I let the pedophiles go without looking into them?"

He hmm'd a bit. "Gimme a couple days. You're right. I've already sent you the ones we know of that turned killer."

I got up, pacing, thinking, glad the cord of the phone let me pick the base up and walk around the office with it. "How about this? You've got your own groupings, right?"

"I don't want to bias your investigation..."

"I'm not... Ok, I am asking you to. But only to this extent. I bet, if I asked you which, say, twenty of your sex offender profiles you'd pick out, first thing without stopping to think, of the ones you'd peg for most likely to graduate..." I was reaching. Not for a list of interviewees, suspects. But for exactly what Trevanian had built up from twenty more years' experience. A profile, a way of thinking.

A little insight.

"I'll mail them to you tomorrow."

The files, like the killers I'd already poured through, told me far more than I'd wanted to know about the predators. Who's got time to watch the vulnerable? Read their habits. When they come home, when they leave. Where they go.

All of them, killers and rapists, there were common touches, little linkages. And there was the one that they all needed. Time. Time to observe, plan. Except for the spur of the moment, while they were still in control enough to not want to get caught, they had to be able to plan. So they got the jobs I'd expect, the ones the nightly news and the daily headlines accidentally condition us all to be so suspicious of, to worry over.

Nurse. Caregiver. Teacher. Priest.

September is the time when new classes come through. Here, it's about two, three weeks into the school year, when the classes have got through the first rush and started to settle into the rhythm of the year. Twelve year olds, seventh grade.

Different schools. Was I looking for someone with a teacher's badge, but who only taught here and there? Substitute work? Teacher in-service?

If the Chronicle'd reacted like a wasp's nest to me coming into their archives, Houston ISD would react like a fire ant mound. This one, if I didn't want to spend months fighting the politics, I'd need some help up front. I stewed on it over the weekend, knowing damned well I'd be walking into my boss's office Monday morning and dreading the moment.

It was the first time I'd come to him first with an idea.

He didn't blink. "You sure?"

"It's the hole in the cloud bank. What fits into it, who'd be able to watch that many kids well enough to know they were vulnerable to that particular kind of kidnapping?"

"Give me a couple days. The head of the school board's police department is an old friend, he'll know who to talk to."

I'd have loved to be able to get into their employee records myself. In the end we had to settle for giving them dates and schools. "They don't want to put their entire workforce at risk," I told my boss.

"The teacher's union would sue us the minute they found out," he replied. "Not that I blame them, I'd be pretty pissed off if someone were doing the same thing to our crew."

"How long do you think they'll sit on it, before they let us look at the files?" I asked

Maybe if we'd pushed... We had that conversation in Penrose's office in July. I'd picked up Amos's file February; that's how the clock moves for these things. Amos and Tracy's twinned flood exhumation, that was March.

Jeffery and William vanished, William the first day after the Labor Day break, Jeffery the week after that. On schedule.

We met in Penrose's office. We being the Mayor, the Chief, Penrose, and me hiding in the corner, as best I can. When I explained why we needed to get a look at the school district's employee files, the Mayor pulled the phone over, punched a number in, and put it on speaker. "Tell her the same thing you just told me."

So I did that. The superintendent started to gripe. Until the Mayor leaned back into the conversation. "Jennie, you lost two more students in the past two weeks. Spare us the boilerplate." Or we'll be on the phone to the New York Times, he didn't add.

That's when our cases finally made the headline of the Times. When William didn't come home.

The superintendent dropped it. "We'll need a lawyer present."

The Mayor looked at me. I shrugged. "I don't much care. Just don't get in my way when I need something, that's all I ask."

I had to start at the school board's main offices. I ended up going to each of the schools. Every step of the way with the school board's attack dog trailing along behind me. I didn't blame him. When, not if but when the union got the news... These days, the electronic search would have gone through a lot quicker.

These days, I'd need a warrant just to get to that level. They don't do fishing expeditions, databases and their minders, unless you've got someone on the other side willing to do the work. Which goes back and forth.

I had my ideas. Middle school is that step up, a little bigger school, a few more teachers, cycle's the same and there are only so many of them. Who'd been to more than one? Was I looking for a janitor, no, because if there was anything more permanent at a school than the tenured teacher it was the janitors. Maintenance staff? They had to be able to move around, right, electricians and plumbers, but when would they have the chance to not just watch but learn a kid's patterns?

He was a goddamned bus driver.

There was one other thing the kids all had in common. They were GT kids, gifted and talented. Extra classes, projects, like the athletes and the band kids the GT kids always had just that extra little time at school. Enough so he spotted them. On his way back to the bus barn every day, he'd drive past the school and there would be the stragglers, heading out for home by bus or by foot.

Or, for Rod, and here was the guy's mistake: he'd been the bus driver for some of the GT kids. Run a regular route and come back to pick up the half dozen smart kids and Rod had been one of them. The very first one of them; Rod had set the pattern.

After, he'd known what to look for. Who his prey were, how to watch for them.

I found him the old fashioned way. Accidentally. Because I'd put together my lists, and I'd gone through them and found nothing. No flags, no histories, the teachers didn't match up, none of them had rotated to the schools I needed, even the interns and the substitutes didn't overlap. The techs and the maintenance crews, even the nurses, I couldn't make a pattern of their assignments. There wasn't one, not that connected with my kids.

So, I went back through the list of names and jobs, and there was one that didn't fit. Teachers and staff, but I didn't remember looking for bus drivers, how'd this name get there?

Not his, not the guy I'd only come to really know by his internet handle; she really was an accident. A bus driver whose name had ended up in my list for some reason I never did figure out.

But it finally jogged the brain cells loose. Eleven months, I'd bird-dogged the school district personnel files for eleven months, every passing calendar page telling me I was one month closer to next September.

I'd missed a category.

The attack dog wasn't happy about it. "You've already had your fishing expedition, detective."

"If you think it's so easy, how about you come down here and I give you the case to solve, counselor? We can start with the autopsy reports, so you have a clear understanding of what we're dealing with."

I got the access. And this time, just in time, I found the pattern that had to be there. There are only so many bus barns, and an awful lot of routes to run. There was only one possibility, seven kids and seven different schools and the years between. I had his address and real name within hours, once I had the right category to search through.

He went by Septimus, on the internet as it was then, barely more than a handful of bulletin boards for the midnight warriors to meet and hash out their complaints and frictions. I didn't see that up front, not until after.

I didn't go to the trailer by myself. Trevanian had shown up. The Times has, had, that way about them. When they got the bit in their teeth, the powers that be noticed. When DeJuana spotted the pattern, with just weeks to go she went for the gold medal and filed her story on the "September Killer"; the Times picked it up from the Chronicle and ran with it. And just about the time I was going back to the school board to look for bus drivers, Trevanian was boarding his plane for my world.

He knocked on my door right as I circled the name, and the address. I waved the strange man in while I went digging for my Key Map. "Help you?"

"Will Trevanian, detective." I took the big mitt he hung over my desk, mumbled something incoherent and flipped the binder open.

"First time I've seen you in person, detective, and I have a feeling you're about to take me on a very interesting drive."

Give him credit. He'd been doing this long enough to know what that look is, the one when you've got something, something real. We were twenty minutes away, forty if traffic was bad. The bus routes, he'd have to be home by now, rush hour was winding down and the South Freeway wasn't yet the mess it's turned into.

Another difference between now and then. My boss now would have a blue screaming fit if I took off to confront a possible killer without letting him know about it. I didn't know any better. Besides, I had a six-three, ex-mil, no-fooling FBI agent sitting in my office.

"I don't know if this guy is the one who did it or not. Would you be willing to help me find out?"

Trevanian looked at the folders, the lists of names. The pattern I'd drawn up across an accordion sheet spread of green and white striped printer paper.

The address I'd circled, the name, and the Key Map binder.

"Detective, I sure as hell didn't fly down to Houston in August hoping you'd blow me off and send me back to D.C. emptyhanded. Just promise you'll talk it out as we drive." Because whatever else Trevanian was here for, he wanted me to be right. Now, on the drive, walking up to the trailer house sitting on a half-acre of flood-prone coastal prairie.

Sitting on the guy's beat-up old couch, asking if he'd known my kids. One by one, Amos, Rod. Tracy. Geno. Menna. William. Jeffery. Naming every one, going through the list, when the guy's face is breaking in front of me, Will's moving I can hear the floor creak under his weight maybe not the guy's moving his hand behind the counter and now.

I don't yell. I say, "On the floor, Mr. Billings, on the floor now." And he's still reaching for something when my gun rises and the sights settle in over his nose.

And here we are. "Go for it, lady. Pull it, you know you want to." And so I do, only I don't shoot the son of a bitch like he wants me to, he's smiling as he says it. Until the bullet passes by his ear, into the hood vent behind him and Will and I move like we'd been doing this all our lives, me first around the counter and Will right behind me, I keep the sights centered on him.

Even as he slides down onto the floor in front of us. Maybe he'd have gone for the gun, a revolver he kept in the knife drawer, if I'd have been stupid enough to show up by myself.

As it was, he went to his face; Will cuffed him. And I holstered the gun and lead Pierce Billings to the car.

We didn't go back into the trailer until we'd done the rest of the work. The details stuff. A warrant, that was easy, dispatch put Penrose through and then Will and I were swearing to the judge over the radio. "I'll be there in an hour with the warrant," Penrose told me when we got through with that. "The badges should be there a lot quicker."

The first marked car was close enough the red lights reflected across my car as we spoke. "Got it. We're not going anywhere."

What we found in the trailer, well, it got to the papers because DeJuana had started listening to the police band. She beat Penrose there; she didn't have to wait for Judge Emmett to sign any paperwork. I didn't recognize the Jeep, but I had enough suspicions to leave Will with our suspect and head DeJuana off. "Just do me a favor and wait at the end of the driveway. This guy could be a nervous drug dealer who doesn't have anything to do with anything."

"Uh-huh. Just answer one question, and I'll wait here like a good girl."

I could do that. "Shoot."

"Do you really think the guy you've got in the back of the car was just someone dumb enough to overreact to you coming in to ask him a question?"

That was the first time I'd had a chance to think back, to remember Septimus's face, the hunger that flew into his eyes when I named my kids. Amos Turner, Tracy Shepherd, Geno LeGuin, Menna Luongo. Jeffery Modesto. William Benne. Rod Washington. The first chance I had to reflect on that hunger, and that he couldn't help but feel it even as I was reaching for the gun on my belt.

"No, DeJuana. He wasn't a dumbshit we stumbled on by accident. He knew why we were there."

This week's story is the next in the Neverland Disorder, a Detective Kelli Hench Mystery. I call it: Call Before You Dig.

Call Before You Dig, by M.K. Dreysen, will be posted in just a bit, so hang around and read what happens next. Or before, as may be...

...Someone's left in cold storage...

Siouxsie and the Banshees: Carcass. Siouxsie Sioux, Steven Severin, and Peter Fenton, songwriters.

It's March release day for me! For your reading pleasure, I've put up a new novella. A Wolf In Taos Valley by M. K. Dreysen is now available! Please enjoy!

(Base cover image courtesy of Adryanah at Pixabay)

It was supposed to be a quick, easy, spring break trip to Taos. Skis. Snow. Good times.

Terra and company had the plan, they had the drive and the laughs and the good company. It was all so very good. Until the jerk in the truck stop refused to take no for an answer.

He followed her, them, all the way to Taos. And then it got worse.

Something's hunting Terra now. Someone. And whatever he has become now: jerk, wolf, it doesn't matter. He won't stop.

But neither will Terra. One of them won't survive this. Terra's going to make sure it's the wolf that feeds the carrion hunters.

A Wolf In Taos Valley is available in both print and ebook editions.

The print version is available at Amazon.

The ebook versions are available at Amazon, Kobo, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, Lulu, and Books2Read.

State of the Working-From-Home Like Everyone Else Writer, March 2020 edition

Well, as long time readers might expect, I'm traveling a great deal less for the day gig these days. We're all at home and well, chronicling our ills and hoping this passes little by little.

I don't have much help for the blizzard of news, rumors, information. I keep up with the day to day of the Covid-19 as best I can, judging what may be and what might have been and what may yet come.

We're in the garden more than we have been. The schedule's not all that different; even in "regular" mode, whatever that meant, I work from home as often as not. The coronavirus difference, for us personally, is now even the daughter-unit is sharing time with cats and dogs and us.

And the roses. They are slowly admitting spring bloom season may be here. Two of them are current; the front yard rose had a late winter bloom, but he's resting at the moment.

Two of our backyard team have taken up the slack. The white one is behind chicken wire for her own protection. She's developing her talons well, though, and I expect by winter she'll be more than capable of defending herself against our random mutts and their desparate attacks.

The yellow rose, one of our two older backyard crew, I don't think will ever be entirely free of protective wire. She's a lady of refinement, her thorns are decorative.

On the other hand, her switch-blade wielding companion, yet to join the blooms, will also remain behind wire for the indefinite future. For our, and the dogs, protection, not hers. As you may notice, she's got the weapons and she knows well their power.

The day gig consumes time, even under the circumstances, but I have still managed to carve out writing and publication time. The free stories, once a week here, you've likely seen. Those are all set to continue; I'll also have new works showing up at the retail level.

Oh, before I forget: I have to thank Charles French and the Indies Unlimited crew for hosting their respective March 2020 book promotions pages. Follow those links if you're looking for a good new read!

Stay tuned, let your friends and enemies (but only the respectable enemies, the kind you'd sit down for a nice cuppa with, carefully eyeing the knives...) know if you enjoy what you read in my stories.

And most of all, dear reader, keep your loved ones close, and keep you and yours safe. It's a big bad world out there again, let's keep the monsters where they belong.

Between the covers of your favorite books...

Provisional - A Story of What Trouble the Kids Can Get Into...

"Provisional access granted."

I wasn't really sure I wanted to know, but I asked the question anyway. "What
does that even mean?"

"In brief, it means that you're allowed only to read an algorithm-determined
subset of files."

No worries. "I'm not part of the family. I'm used to it."

Just a basic element of the job. Any organization with the grunt to put
together an AI doesn't allow just anyone to walk in and touch the goods. If
they've got reason to use them, they've got plenty of reason to protect
them.

From the unsavory, of course, not your humble correspondent.

I was sitting in the boss's office. Well, the sub-boss anyway, I think she
has some sort of title meaningful on the ever shifting corporo-political
landscape, but to me all the titles sound like noise. If they were important,
really and truly important, they wouldn't need me poking around, they'd have had someone on staff for that.

The company is a chemical company, small, an independent of
the sort that usually pops up only long enough to get bought out by the
major internationals. This one is owned by a family trust, so they aren't
interested in the sorts of inducements that the big crowd can bring to bear.

Problem was, this company, well the family company that owned them, had been suckered by their own next generation. One of the kids had gone off to school, then come back with big dreams of what the next gen AI could do for the family concern.

No big deal, right? They'd been around the block enough to know just what to
do.

That is, give the kid just enough rope, a little project of his own with budget
small enough to make him work for it, turn him loose. Most likely he screws it
up, blows the money on a pile of computers and software out of date before it
came out of the package. At worst, he turns loose a virus that gets caught in
the sandbox the IT crew built around him and melts down his toys.

And who knows, if he actually makes something of it, the family concern comes
out ahead of the game, with the next generation lined up and learning a little
something.

Turns out, they got the worst of both worlds. They got an AI that works just
well enough so they can't justify tearing it out, and just bad enough to make
everyone in the family and the company itself crazy trying to deal with it.

The good, and the bad, met in my little bailiwick, analyzing the data to
double check how their plants were running. The AI was good enough at what
the kid had set it up to do, which was keep an eye on their supply feeds,
flag anything that it knew was going to cause trouble on the products side,
and warn everybody when it ran into something that could shut down the plants.

No one knew what would happen, though, when it ran into something new.
Something outside its data set. That's where I came in.

"Right, just to be clear, you're supposed to let me read through the feed
stock data for Cannae, Mithras, and Old Oak, and their corresponding production data."

The AI took its time checking permissions. "Agreed."

"And, you're supposed to let me have access to the plant maps, process
drawings, all the nuts and bolts of the operation engineering."

It went back to its directives. "I believe that I should only allow you this
information if you can show me that it's necessary to complete your analysis."

I smacked my forehead with my hand. "Oh, that's right. Excuse me, I forgot
the details of it." It's what happens when the lawyers, machine and biological,
get involved in consulting contracts.

They never, ever, let the company just release data, to anybody, without say
so. Even, probably especially, when it's necessary to do my job.

"No worries, I'm used to it." It's the data engineer's version of asking for
grant money. The constant need to go back and beg for the next few crumbs, and prove that I need it. "Next question, have you got all the data I do have
access to in a single place?"

"Not yet," it replied. "But on analysis, I believe that to be within your
directive."

I didn't sigh in frustration. There's no point. "Please, then, would you
provide copies of all files I have access to in a single directory? This will
insure that I don't have to query you as often."

A few minutes later, the system responded. "The directory request is valid,
files transferring now, estimated time to complete transfer approximately
fifty hours and forty-seven minutes..."

Right. Because simple links to the files were never going to fit into its
idea of information security. Any files transferred to me would be isolated
and not allowed back on the other side of the fence without a directive from
whoever was on high.

Not that the lady on high was around to tell the AI that. She'd parked me here
for the same reason the AI had parked me in an isolated directory. "I'm off
for a week with the family, we're headed to Yosemite for some hiking.
I told my staff to give you everything you need. It's probably best for you
to just use my office, that way at least I don't have to kick anyone else out
of their desk for you."

"You're a pretty good boss."

"I remember when I was in their shoes. I like to think I've learned a thing
or two." She waved me over to the secondary desk on the wall. "I just ask you
to use that one. I'm in the middle of a few other projects on my main desk,
and I don't have time to clean up before I leave."

In other words, she was leaving bait out on her desk, if I was dumb enough to
fool with it. I didn't look around for the cameras I knew would be eyes on me
for every minute I was there.

She was still sitting there as I made my introductions to the AI system. Which,
for someone who was about to take off to catch a flight with her kids seemed
like more time than really necessary. "Eh," I told myself. "What'd you expect?"
She left as soon as she knew I hadn't bounced off the login security.

It was my first gig with the company. Everyone I'd met was personable, nice
people to talk to, everyone involved seemed to know what they were doing and
be comfortable talking about it.

They just weren't quite willing to let me off the leash without some guardrails.

"How're you set then for me coming back in a couple of days, when the data
transfer is complete?" No point hanging around watching the meter run.

Whatever excuses the system had been making for its phone-home bit, it was
apparently willing to speed things up now. It responded as close to immediately
as I was willing to try and measure. "Your directives are consistent for a
thirty day period."

"Physical access, as well?"

"Physical access, to this office and the environs necessary to entry."

"Is there anything you'd like to let me know about, any possible contingencies
that may be appropriate for my information privileges, physical and data
access, given a reasonable intermediate absence?" Might as well probe the
system a bit. How good were its natural language compilers? How much access
did I have for running programs?

"Request outside bounds of appropriateness, re-phrase your request, please."

Now I did sigh. "On confirmation of clean slate for the drive I'm attaching,
please transfer all files complete at present." I'd have to trust that the
machine wouldn't try and sneak in a new directive set while I was at home.

"Request is in directive bounds, transfer commencing, secondary transfer
will be complete in approximately twenty minutes."

At least the connection to my hard drive was fast enough I wouldn't have to
find a vending machine. And argue with the system over whether I was allowed
to use it. "Now, how are you set for me leaving a hard drive for you to
complete the transfer to? That way I can just come in, pick it up Monday,
and then leave you in peace?"

The system had to go back to its analysis mode. "This is valid within your
permissions."

So I hooked a second clean drive to the access point and started meditations
on the inscrutability of the new operations.

Actually, what I was thinking about was how the system might have gotten
itself lost in a blind alley. I do a few things, here I was basically just
a data auditor. At least, that's what my brief was where the system knew
about it. So far as the system was concerned, I could have anything I wanted
so long as it helped me insure the integrity of its data set.

And not a bit more. Nor, apparently, any of its own compute cycles. My analysis
would have to be on my own time.

Outside, or inside of my mind where the system, and the human minders that
would be reviewing this session, couldn't yet go, I had my portfolio from the
owners of the company. "You're looking for anything that sticks out, that
doesn't belong. There's something wrong with the interaction between the AI
and the people in the company. These plants have run well for going on
sixty years, through changes large and small, but in the past six months
they've gone to shit. We need to know why."

Analyze the system as a whole, then. Well, I already had a data point.

If the AI treated the people who worked here the way it had treated me, as
though every bit of data and every compute cycle were a guarded secret
available only on a need to know basis, then it was spending a huge amount
of time just asking whether or not the human requests coming to it were in
the bounds of their permissions.

Put it this way. Why did a boutique chemical company need security that I
usually only saw in government installations? And not just the processing
system. To get into the building I'd had to stand at the door and send
in my request. I asked the human half of the door security on my way out
when they'd started with the motte and bailey routine.

"About six months or so. I'd have to ask around to be sure, that's about the
time they brought me on, and it wasn't here when I did my first interview."

She'd signed me out already.

"The computer system let me know when you were leaving."

Oh. Right. "Well, have a good weekend. Just in case you need to know, I'm
scheduled to come back in Monday morning, bright and early, to finish up
this stage of my project."

"Let me check... Right, you're already in the schedule. Do you have a pass
key to get in?"

Ah. "If it's not too much trouble?"

It wasn't too much trouble. All she needed was about ninety seconds with the
magnet cache, and I was good to go. "Thank you!" And I was outside, lighting
a cigarette on my way to the car.

Contemplating my own security practice. "What are the odds," I asked the
car, "that their AI parked a snooper or two to go along with the data I'm
supposed to be analyzing?"

The car thought about it, but didn't probe the hard drive safely ensconced in
an isolation case. "In other cases, fifty-fifty? In this case, approaching
one hundred percent likelihood."

Good to know I wasn't the only one. "Right. So, ideas about the best way to
approach the hard drive under those circumstances?"

The car wanted more information first. "Do you want to dump your potential
problem on someone else? Or do you want it isolated to your own sandbox?"

"It's kind of rude to turn around and pass the snooper package on to the
unsuspecting, even if we could afford it."

"Right. Heading to the barn." So instead of turning back west to go to my
apartment, the car headed east, onto the interstate and out of town. And I
settled in for a nap.

A couple hours later, and I woke up when the tires hit the gravel road.

The barn is my bit of an old family camp; farm, really. The farm's in the
state now that you'd expect after a few generations of wrangling over
who gets what when grandma passes. A couple acres for Joe, a couple acres
for Mary, bits and pieces sold off to the school board or the water board or
the back taxes Uncle Sid missed...

My barn sits in a cluster of trees on three acres. A metal building my mom
had let her brothers and sisters use to park tractors, and then my generation
pretty much scattered to the winds. They all still owned their pieces, but
the only thing they were interested in doing there was renting the hunting
rights out.

Me, in one of the rare times when the bank account had been flush, I'd rebuilt
the barn, from the slab up, into home away from home. Fibre, power,
roof-top solar and meter and backup generator, satellite connection for when
I needed to go out there to hide from a hurricane.

And plenty of racks and server space. This was where I kept my grunts, my
heavy lifters. "Hey guys."

"Dude," and "Yeah," and "What's up?".

Sue me, I like AI with personality. Especially when I don't get to verbally
interact with them every day, it's nice to walk in and feel like there's a
family party about to happen. Most of the daily work is through ye olde
fashioned keyboard, just to minimize the overhead.

"Right. Fair warning, I've got a quarantine situation."

"Um, dude. What are you doing bringing trouble into our midst?"

"I figured you'd see it as a challenge."

There was a pause while the three of them worked out their quorum, then the
temporary lead system came back. "You're going to have to go through the
Process."

"Don't I know it."

And that's the other side of my view of the electronic world. Before they'd
agree to go too far with the suspect hard drive, I had to prove that I was
who I said I was.

"What's the game today?"

"Nothing major, dude. Just a little flight attack, a little raid."

Fresh from my nap, and first thing they did is dump me into a three hour
simulation of Normandy, with me in a Thud leading the waves.

In bare terms, they were analyzing my reactions, strategy, tactics, the whole
works. It's an extended version of the password-security question regime,
turned up to eleven.

And yeah, if you change tactics and approach, you'd better hope you've trained
them to anticipate it. Buddy of mine locked herself out of her own servers for
a month, and not just once. She'd gotten into a habit of isolating her game
plays, Go one thing, Chess another, Wolfenstein-3D still another. Without
training her crew on the different thought processes she likes to engage with.

Problem was, I think Yardly enjoyed breaking into her own systems. How else
to explain why she'd done it more than once? I guess we all have our own
set of fragility methods.

Back to the immediate. While I was busy flying through the hedgerows, the
other two members of the AI quorum were going through the hard drive, picking data apart, looking through scripts, checking for any accidental passengers.

The rig was an isolation circuit. Waldos, just like a nuclear engineer would
use for their piles, but here mostly electronic, with a sacrificial computer
running between the AI's and the target of their investigation.

When they were satisfied I was me, and the drive wasn't going to need to be
tossed out in the barrel and burned in a fire, they commenced the next round
of questions.

"What's the analytic objective?" The surfer dude/dudette approach generally
doesn't last once the "real" work begins. The gang have their own view of the
world and approaches to it.

"First? Data integrity check against the Meowtrix supply chain package." Yeah?
So the original company that contacted me makes pet food? These days, they're
almost more careful about what goes into moose and squirrel than they are
about what goes into Josephine and Bobby down the street.

Point was, they were the ones that initiated the data audit that
started the ball rolling. Seems they were getting a variation in their feed
stocks coming to the factory that they weren't used to seeing from our lads,
so check out mi amigos and find out what they've been up to, please and
thank you, and oh by the way the owners of the company in question have their
own questions about what's going on, care to take on the extra retainer?

So more digits show up in the bank account and here we are... with a little
bit different picture inside the company than what Meowtrix are finding in
their own tests.

"Variations begin approximately six months prior to current...", and "prior
to about six months before current, data agreement is identical to within
lab origination and expected variation between technicians..." and...

"File stamps indicate variation in file access after origination."

That's the one. "Pause. File access regularization, please, including time
series and source of secondary access methods where available or inferrable."

Next level investigation, first pass sees something fishy, please go back
and dig through to the next layers. A few hours later, and "No time period
associated with the secondary access, consistent with visual editing software
and organic generation of edits."

"Human editing a file by hand?"

That calculation took a little longer; about three hours or so, and that was
just on the data set we had. The full set would be about fifty times longer,
when we eventually put everything together.

"Likelihood approaches ninety-nine percent."

I'd been doing the things most computer people do while waiting out the long
cycles of the night; surfing the web, playing games, writing my memoirs
destined never to be read by an adoring public who didn't know what they
were losing out on... So I dropped my feet to the floor and traded napping
for pacing.

And asking stupid questions of the air. Well, stupid only to the point
of whether we had the data necessary to answer. "What are the odds that
that vice-president, whatever her name was, whose office I was in is the
one responsible."

Not from any particular insight, but who else was I gonna start with? Pinnocchio?

The answer still took longer than I'd expected, given the limitations. Which
really sort of worried me, 'cause I shouldn't have had the data for this.
"Better than fifty-fifty, probably at least seventy percent."

"Uh-huh, just how on earth did you manage that one? Did that AI sneak in a
file system it shouldn't have?"

"Almost. The snooper files in the hard drive didn't originate with the AI
system. They were loaded to your hard drive from a different location using
the company systems as a go-between."

"Well now." I stopped my pacing and flopped down into the chair in front
of the video rig. "If she's responsible for it..."

"Her name's Maria Lanella."

"So if Mrs. Lanella is responsible for this, then we'd better get the owners
on the phone."

"Why's that?"

"It took you about six hours just to do the estimates. There's no telling how
long it'll take their own AI to do the direct calculations on its own data
file. And Lanella said she's running off to Yosemite for a week."

"So?"

"I have a feeling they're going to want to know about it before she gets back."

That, and I didn't have permission to set up the AI self-check. First though,
I had to talk the owner I'd been working with off the roof. "We don't have
confirmation of anything yet. It'll be Monday before the file transfers for
the Meowtrix data are complete. After that, you're gonna need someone who
can set the AI to check its own internal mechanisms."

She stopped a rant before she got good and going. So much for the flighty
heiress persona. "Can you set this up?"

Yeah. Except for the part where if I sat down and started playing with the
machine in the lady's office, odds were the alarms would be flashing on her
computer five seconds after I started. "I think you're going to need your
nephew to be involved in this."

The next generation, half-trained enough to set the AI up, inexperienced enough to not realize how vulnerable a new AI can be. "Do I need to have him meet you there Monday morning?"

"Can you get a hold of him this weekend, instead? If we verify this, you don't
want any signs that might warn her we're on to her game."

"Meet me at the house," and she rattled off an address, "in about three hours.
Greg will be there."

The unspoken "or else" made me feel sorry for whoever Greg was involved with.

The good thing, from my point of view, is that Greg apparently knew his aunt
well enough to translate whatever it was she told him. "You've got evidence
that my AI system's been cracked?"

"What did you have to give up to get here?"

"Gaming weekend, we had a raid set up. But this is more important, Ms. Lee."

Seems like Greg and I were going to get along just fine. I walked him through
it, including that the data I was explicitly authorized to have would be
ready for me Monday morning. "I could probably set something up from her office, if I had the access. But you're the expert on whether that's necessary or not."

"You think she's monitoring her office?"

"She inserted the spoofer programs onto that hard drive from remote, after
your AI and I were doing her dance. I'd say she's gonna know when I sit back
down again, and have a pretty good idea of what I'm up to."

He sat down and drew me a map, pen and paper and good old fashioned network knowledge. "She's one of the few in the company who has almost complete access."

"Meaning, she can install her own programs, and she has root control over the
OS portion she's got hard wired paths to."

He nodded. "Pretty much. Besides me, the only ones with general root privilege
are the company IT crew." He complete his map and shoved it across the table.
"Like that."

A hub and spokes. Some of the management team had control over their end of
the spokes, but the hub was out of their hands. "And you're fairly confident
that the data she's corrupted has propagated to the rest of the network."

He groaned, leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. "One of the
things they made me do, before they'd let me move out of testing, was to
allow the managers to check off on their own data integrity."

Meaning, she could override anyone else on what constituted proper data, and
the rest of the network had to take her word for it.

"One thing's for sure, you're going to have a pretty good example of what's
wrong with that."

"Assuming they don't tear it out."

Well, there was that. "Let's see if we can rescue your system first."

And that's what we did, more or less. By the time Monday morning came around, Greg had put the AI into it's self-check mode, "This is something that's
pretty routine, so Maria won't really notice."

"I'm assuming there's something a little different about this self-check,
though?"

"Oh my, yes."

So I was able to go in and pick up my hard drive with the complete Meowtrix
data set without an issue. And without the need to do anything that would
flag Maria, if she was watching me.

I resisted the urge to wave. Instead I just came in, asked the AI if its
data transfer was complete, and made off with my drive. Then it was back
to the barn to finish my analysis.

Which took about three days, including writeup. The key phrase in the whole
thing was "Data manipulation throughout, including key elementals likely
consistent with AI learning set manipulation".

Email off to Meowtrix and the owners of the chemical company, along with
invoices, and that was the end of it, at least as far as I was concerned.
The only other interaction I had in the business was telling the owner
she could hire a buddy of mine, a private investigator, if she needed
someone to go after Maria in the real world. I don't do that sort of
thing personally, but I know somebody.

Assuming Yardly wasn't locked out of her systems again.

For your reading pleasure, later this evening I'll be posting a story I call Provisional.

It's a story of what kind of mess you might find when you leave the kids minding the store.

...frozen stranger stealing your fires, the message hit my mind...

Heart: Dog and Butterfly. Ann Wilson, Nancy Lamoureax Wilson, Susan Ennis, songwriters.

One For The... A Story of the Past Come To Call

Lights up, Mendacious Minny's place looks like any other bar in the known
universe. Beat up old floors. A half-circle bar that looks more like a high
school cafeteria than something a genteel ginslinger of the old cultured type
would recognize.

Windows to the outside world are garage doors, open now in the evening air.
The p.a. system runs to the outside so the overflow crowd can enjoy the
music just as much as the groupies Minny hopes will jam the inside.

How it changes when the lights come down is our job.

Just don't ever play a song with a line like "have a drink on us". Not in
Minny's place, she's fast to count pennies against the band's take. She's
sent more than one group home with a bill for services rendered even after
they've packed the place to the rafters and the fans have bought every drop
of liquor in the house.

We're old pros, though. Minny's ways don't surprise us. Sure, piss us off,
of course.

So long as we keep our eight-armed drummer away from the drink trays, though,
we're usually more than a few hundred each to the good at the end of the night.
It ain't a living, exactly. But it's one hell of a nice bonus twelve nights
a year.

Minny's other scam on musicians being license fees. Her and every other
venue in the galaxy.

Doesn't matter to us, though. Any covers we do are long since public domain.
Most of our sets are originals. Plus, we've played there enough now for her
computers to build up a database.

New bands spend hours with her, before and after the shows, going over each
piece, wrangling with her about which ones she's got to pay for. With a nice
surcharge on top for the house.

DJ's, new ones anyway, go through hell. Last hot young thing to come through,
a Lrztop with her adult scales just setting, spent three days with Minny,
going through the recording fifteen seconds at a time until every last song bit
had been accounted for.

Good thing Y'ld'na drew a massive crowd, spillaway into the parking lot. She
was lucky. Even with sending royalty checks as far away as the Little Peeper's
and Hoppers Elementary Grassreed Orchestra in the Usalalit Demesne, she ended
up profiting on the trip. A normal crowd and she'd have been doing more than
just cussing and complaining.

Last I heard, Y'ld'na's even booked another trip to Minny's place. But this time
she's sending a pre-recorded performance ahead. Live and learn.

Tonight we're a jazz band. We've got six, enough talent to get 'em out on
the dance floor. We've even got a singer who does a pretty good job on the
vocal bits.

Minny's feeling melancholic. Her homeworld's star went nova a little early.
They got everybody out of the system in time, so her parents and family are
ok.

Except for the part where they moved in with her. That part she doesn't look
too happy about, but them's the breaks. She's covering up well enough, she
asked for a jazz set so she could get the crowd up and dancing, drinking, early
in the evening, then send 'em off on the blue note toward closing time.

Crowd skills.

It's not until I have my trumpet in my hand and the mic stand in front of
me that I see the night's problem child for the first time. Traalska, lean
and small. It's not physicality that makes me wonder what we're in for,
she's not the type to make you reach for a chair.

It's the look she gave Minny.

Minny is dressed up, heels and skirts and the whole bit, ready to dance and
get the evening started. She doesn't do it very often. Tonight is a night
for the bar crew to make the money, she's going to make some fun.

The Traalska follows Minny with her eyes. She's set up just off the dance
floor, sitting at a table with the drummer's wives.

After the first set, I ask Ledannt about her. "Oh, she's a cousin by
marriage. Odthina offered to put her up for a couple weeks while she gets
settled in to her new job."

Family business. Why's she looking at Minny like Minny'd served her iced
tea instead of gin fizz? "I'll get qAr'd to ask Odthina after our next set."

Next set, we move on to bop. Nothing hard, just faster, the early stuff.
Now that everybody's warmed up it's time to get down and funky.
Mixed in with a little early Armstrong, some Dixieland Jazz Band. Just enough
to give everyone a breather, then crank it back up and let it swing.

qAr'd is Ledannt's oldest bride. And the most subtle. "She says it's because
Oaate served in the Leq Division."

Who's Oaate? And what's the Leq Division? "Odthina's cousin, remember you
were wondering what her deal with Minny was? The Leq Division were the ones
who pacified Minny's homeworld in the last big blowup."

Not the nova, I guess. "No, not the nova. The Atrophis-Traalska grudge
match, the one that Minny ran away from to come here."

Now I remember. Minny doesn't talk about it much. She hauled herself
halfway across the galaxy to get away from that stuff. But that brought
up another question. "Odthina couldn't care less about that. She's offworld
for the same reason. We don't even send holiday cards."

Time for the third set. Time for Billie, Ella. Time for our crooner to come
on out from behind the keyboards and take a stand at the front. Shift balance,
mostly the swinging songs, keep 'em moving, but now we want to get 'em
close almost as often. Songs for the lovers in the audience, to remind 'em
what might await at the end of the evening.

I love that part. It's been a long time since I held my lover in my arms on
the dance floor.

I felt a little of my own melancholia, walking off the box after the third
set. Probably not a match for Minny, just enough to cuss her for stirring up
old memories.

Just like she wanted, of course. I ignore the drink she set in front of me,
pushed it back to ask for a beer and a glass of ice water. I wonder if
she's seen Odthina's cousin, and the looks she was giving her. "I ignore her.
None of it matters, now."

What if she doesn't see it that way? A shrug. Then. "Tomorrow will be here.
Why should I carry her worries, I have enough of my own?"

Fourth set, torch songs. Time to set up that blue note, get it working through
the hearts and minds. The young lovers migrated for the door during the break.

Old lovers are still around, though. Still ready to dance, slow and easy.
It's not marinating in nostalgia, this.

It's patience. The ease and flow of time. The torch songs, the blue songs,
the ones that let us know someone else has seen the passage of many things.
Wrote about it, the long dark nights.

Minny's got the lights way down. I have to watch when I solo, don't want
to knock the mic over.

All of us have to watch. That's why we don't see the Traalska, Oaate. She
never found a partner.

No. She brought a partner, a little black and blue needle gun. Nasty thing,
a purse gun made for getting out of tight spots.

Minny never saw her coming. The needles went in just at the base of Minny's
neck.

Like you'd do, if you were gunning for a human. Minny's Atrophian, though.
There's a subtle difference in the brain stem, the doctors tell us later. Just
a small difference in orientation, a little twist to the right.

No difference for a bigger gun, or a phaser, something that blasted and tore.
Big difference that saved Minny's life, Oaate using a needler, and a purse
gun at that.

It's enough. She's patchwork, waiting for nerves to regenerate, to be regrown
and reworked. And she'll be a few months restoring memories and learning how
to walk and talk again.

She's surrounded by family as we leave. The look she gives me as I walk out
tells me all I need to know for next month's performance.

"Punk set, Minny, in October? Something fast and loud to celebrate your
return?" The gang nods around me.

Minny smiles, sly and slow. She doesn't glance around at the family hovering
over her bed. Instead, she gives me a thumbs up.

I wonder, to Ledannt on the way out, if the cops will catch Oaate before she
finds a ride off-planet. "She'd better hope so. Odthina didn't take kindly
to what she did. If Odthina catches her first, there won't be anything but
a grease spot left."

This week's story, I call it One For The...

It's a story of the past come to call.

...Clear the way for you to fall...

Wicked Wisdom: Reckoning. Jada Koren, Pocket Honore, and Cameron Graves, songwriters.

(If you don't know of Wicked Wisdom, dig into their story. I won't spoil it for you...)

Ridin' the Wave to New Amsterdam - A Story of A Highway Ticket Earned the Hard Way

The joke of the galaxy. Or on the galaxy, nobody knows for sure. Either way,
New Amsterdam's the little orbiting settlement that could.

And we were coming into it about as hot as you can.

Wave blast, flux, settle, breathe, hit the brakes, and we should all be about
forty a.u.'s out, plenty of elbow room, no chance of dancing into somebody's
path. Rules of the road, if everybody in this forgotten corner of the world
hasn't been out bending the elbow...

Problem is, that star's awful close.

"Lemmy, quick calculation. How far are out are we?"

The ship did his thing. "About ten a.u.'s, give or take, based on the last
known solar state."

"Any chance the star's going nova just a bit ahead of schedule?"

"Roughly? About point two percent chance. It could happen."

"What do you need to check it?"

"Given current? A couple of days. I don't have enough measurements
yet to know what our relative inclination is."

Or where the rest of the planets were. Lemmy needs at least a couple other
planets to triangulate from.

So, if we came in where we aimed for, the star's gone nova and consumed a few
planets in the nearest neighborhood already. A tragedy.

Or, we came in rotated ninety degrees and a few million miles away from where
we should have been. A catastrophe, on the personal level. And I'm not just
talking about the chewing out I'd get from traffic control when we got them
on the horn.

That takes a couple days, as well. Once established, fast connection no
latency. Subspace communications are fantastic.

Problem being, they don't know where we are, and neither do we. It takes a
fair bit of precision to establish the link.

So, either way, I did what any self-respecting captain would do under the
circumstances. I went looking for a drink.

"Coffee, tea, water. You know the drill."

It's hell when your co-pilot's your bartender. "Lemmy, what's it gonna take
for you to relax the rules?"

"Fire, damnation, your basic armageddon rag."

Right. So I grabbed my cuppa and headed for the Cavern. That's where I keep
the tools for the gig.

I spend most of my time in calibration. That's reason number forty-two
why there's a live being aboard. Lemmy can take care of himself, if he knows
where the damage is.

For the most part, anyway. Something happens to his circuits, usually there's
a need for a spare set of hands. His self-checks are more than good enough
to catch the death knell of a worn out part.

But that's not his worst worry. His worst worry is gaslighting.

Meatspace, we get Alzheimer's, delusions, psychosis and depression. Silicospace, and they get viruses. And viruses these days are more than good enough to make sure that a computer that's sick doesn't know it.

Lemmy can't afford to have his navigation systems crap out on him. Quite
literally. He's in hock for his build to a set of intergalactic banks
that like to pull ships apart and sell them for scrap. I don't know the
numbers, but it's enough to keep him hustling.

That, and he's got a bit of fear about being stranded in the middle of nowhere.
There's a few floating hulks in his family of builds, and he's damned paranoid
about making sure he doesn't join them. Which is where I come in.

Reasons number one through fifty I'm here? All some variation of keep Lemmy
going and alive.

The Cavern's the only space on the ship that Lemmy's completely blind to.
It's where we hide all the independent subsystems, at least their control
logic. Most of them are backup for engines, navigation, the things that keep
us going.

The rest keep me going, life support and the like. That's the part that
some builds cheap out on. I don't understand it, really. How many ships do
you have to lose before you realize what the problem is? One is none and two
is one, guys.

Belt and suspenders for the engineers out there. I can't much see how you can
think it's ok to just back up the computer.

Wait, I know, don't tell me. I know how risk calculations are made.

Let's just say that I'm grateful that Lemmy's a wildcatter, and knows where his
long term profits come from. People who sign up with the corps are looking to
make corpse, assuming they hear the chatter about how many corporation
ships come home sans their biological co-pilots.

So, let's sit down with the cuppa and the independent computers and control
systems, and see if we can figure out if anything's ailing the...

Shit.

It didn't take long at all to stumble onto something.

I walked over to the door and stuck my head into the hallway. "Hey, Lemmy?"

"Yeah?"

"You've been cavorting with strange computers again, haven't you?"

"Not that I remember. I take it you found something?"

Yeah, I'd found something. He'd picked up a virus somewhere, and one that
wasn't even trying all that hard to hide.

No, let me correct that. Wherever the program had originated, they knew their
business. The virus was a thing of beauty, for what it was made to do. Lemmy
could run for decades in orbital space without knowing the thing was there.

One jump to a new system, though, and here we are. And he'd still never know.

Until he made the second jump and could never get home.

And, if I was reading the thing's logic correctly, our little course shift was
necessary for its method of phoning home to the overlords. It needed a
particular orientation relative to the galactic disc to send its 'part one
done, boss' signal. What was part two?

'Hulk ready, boss', apparently. So, first jump grab hold and signal, second
jump send it to vacant space and wait for the rag and bone crew to come along
and pick apart our hulk. Scrap heap ready-made to order.

There was a secondary logic hiding there, too. A bit of analysis of the system
Lemmy targeted for the first jump. A comparison to the thing's internal
database, mostly tech levels.

So why did I say it wasn't even trying to hide? Ah, it wasn't trying to hide
from me.

They'd built it for the corporation standard build. They'd assumed that there
wouldn't be a co-pilot available, someone with the right tools to analyze Lemmy's systems independently. "How many shortsighted 'economic' dimwits are there in this galaxy?"

Enough to make them profitable hijack targets, apparently.

Now, I was the one who needed to be paranoid. And doubly so.

Maybe the virus builders weren't so single-point-of-failure. Maybe they'd
set me up. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that they wanted to make
it look like they'd only built the thing for the corporation boneheads.

How then, brown cow?

What was that secondary logic for? Where are you guys hiding my little
surprise package, now that I've found your...

Front door, back door. I unplugged the analytic computer. Yanked the
battery.

Then I walked over to one of the custom parts of Lemmy's build, a vacuum and
electromagnetic isolation chamber. I put the computer and battery into it
and I shut the lid.

Best I could do under the circumstances. Which were, now that I had a little
time to count, the following.

Sick computer-slash-ship-slash-pilot, check. Sick subsystems, highly likely.

Dumb meatspace co-pilot, with no likely independent way to rebuild these things on the fly, considering where we all were and how far from safety? Screwed.

I'd have to hope that the thing's programming hadn't corrupted Lemmy's signal
collection gear, nor my independents.

Assume the logic's the same, but they've got you by the short and curlies?

That is, why was I assuming that the system we'd jumped to was the one we
wanted to go to? If I were running the scam, I wouldn't necessarily let your
first jump be the one you wanted.

So, no human backups, everything goes like the first level logic, ship jumps
first time, signal home, second jump, flying hulk in vacant space.

Human backup? Secondary logic says send the ship into a system that doesn't
have the gear needed to truly and completely isolate the ship's systems for
clean reboot. But sophisticated enough that I would think that I'd done the job right.

You know, pretty much the bog-standard description of the New Amsterdam system. Good enough to go to and enjoy. Not so good you'd notice until you're hard up for a rebuild. Since we were aiming for it anyway, there'd been
no need to push anybody's buttons, just ride along with it, cowboy.

Awful easy to do. The thing's got complete access to Lemmy's systems, it
doesn't take much to do a comp against the next target. If it fits the necessary
parameters for crippled ship, great. If not, break out.

There's always a system next door that's a little behind its neighbors. And
any ship that's been around the block a time or two will have made a mistake
and jumped a few systems over.

Most old hands would do their standard checks and chalk it up to the randomness of the universe.

Since I didn't have anything else to do, I settled in for my calibration
runs. If the virus did have any sort of monitoring setup, what I was doing
wouldn't twig them. Normal procedures.

I didn't know what was worse. Two and a half days of drumming my fingers and
waiting for our physical measurements to come in, or the confirmation that
we were in the New Amsterdam system.

Ten a.u.'s out, and high above the orbital plane of the system majors. So,
the thing had messed with us, but not so much that we were in the wrong
system, or in any danger of running into anything in the standard traffic
pattern.

"Well, Lemmy, at least we don't have to worry about sending out condolence
messages to the rest of the galaxy."

"Don't gloat too much. I've established the subspace link, and traffic control
wants to talk to you."

Which went about how you'd expect. They threatened me every which way to Sunday, loss of privileges, demotion to second alternate urinal cake dispenser, the works.

It didn't get better when I gave them a little warning about what shape
Lemmy was in. It's bad enough to have a hot ride coming in through the wrong
traffic lane. It's another thing entirely for it to be the computer equivalent
of a plague ship.

"I'm just glad they're not aiming torpedoes at us."

"I almost wish they had." He'd received the coordinates for the berth they'd
assigned us.

Let's just say it wasn't in the best part of town. The part of the star
harbor where anything loose could be walked away with, and anything that could be pried up was considered loose.

"It's been a while since you had to worry about locking your doors at night,
Lemmy."

"Very funny, Mike." We had pretty good procedures for me getting in and out of
the ship when he was locked down. "What I'm worried about is whether we'll be
able to get the work done, down there in the dungeons."

The mechanics we'd need would be demanding hazard pay. "Let me guess,
your cargo's locked down as well."

"The lawyer didn't call it Perdition, but she might as well have."

"You don't happen to have any liquid assets available?"

"They won't even touch the Lloyd's account until one of their inspectors
declares me clean."

"Ouch."

I had a rough idea of what sort of costs we could expect. Even if I was the
one doing all the real work, the onsite inspectors weren't going to touch
me until I had a local sign off on the work. And, I'd need local hardware.

"Time to check our vaults."

There were other advantages to the Cavern. Besides the obvious, since the
space is listed on official documents as merely "live body space for
the co-pilot and his hobbies", it's where we put the off-manifest cargo.

Of course Lemmy smuggles. And not just because he's trying to pay off his
mortgages, either. Half the cargo in the galactic trade is illegal in one
jurisdiction or another. No matter what you do, at some point you're going
to find yourself smuggling, at least according to one set of local authorities
or another. So you might as well plan for it from the beginning.

Think I'm kidding? Try and take a half-gallon of ice cream through the Merida
Arrangement sometime, and see what happens. That's one of the reasons we have a separate set of food-grade freezer cabinets in the Cavern.

I started piling up what I thought I'd need for bribes. Dried fruit, because
gravity's always a thing. Gold dust, x86 chips.

Don't scoff. By orders of magnitude, they're still the most common processor
in the galaxy, and probably always will be. Certainly if IntFruitSoft have
their say about it.

New Amsterdam's just a bit poor in heavy metals compared to the galactic
system average. Not enough to matter in the long run, but it certainly makes
chip manufacture just that little bit more expensive.

Oh, and a bottle of brandy from one of Lemmy's friends in the Ortega Seldom
Division.

Then it was time to call up my angel.

"Oh, Christ, what have you two done now?"

This wasn't getting off to the best of starts. "Who pissed in your breakfast
this morning, Melba?"

"Don't start with me, Mike. You don't call over the isolation signal because
everything's going fine and dandy. What'd you do to Lemmy?"

"I'm not certain how much I should tell you over subspace, under the
circumstances." The look on her face was classic. I could call up
thunderstorms on a gas giant if I could figure out how to bottle it. "We need
you to show that our independent measures aren't corrupted."

"And then you'll need to borrow my gear."

"Well..."

"Deep subject for a shallow mind," she pointed out.

"Don't worry, Melba. The phrase 'valuable considerations' springs to
mind." I didn't want to scare her off, so I didn't have much choice but to
let her know we were paying customers.

"Valuable doesn't count that pisswater brandy Lemmy pawned off on me last
time. I can't even use that shit to sanitize circuits."

I hid the bottle under the desk, then dug out a single-malt to show
her. "How's the Macallen grab you these days?"

"You'd better have more than your hideaway bottle if you want to get in my
circuit cabinets, Mike." She was grinning at me when she said it, so at least
I knew Melba wasn't planning on leaving us high and dry. "See you in a few
days. Oh, and bring some of those mealworms from Slabdek." She signed off.

Iuzians. If I ever find out what Slabdek did to her candied mealworms to
turn half their expats into sugar fiends... I'm just glad Melba didn't expect
me to share a snack with her.

I should have left well enough alone at that point. But
somewhere in the back of my head, I guess I have a cat's curiosity.

That, or an engineer's inability to quit futzing with a system just because
it's doing it's job. Either way, instead of doing the sensible thing and
taking a nap, I went back to the computer I'd left in
isolation to continue digging through the guts of the virus.

Now, don't get me wrong. I didn't just plop the thing on my desk and start
pecking away. That's what I have dry-suits and oxygen supplies for. Not that
eight hours in vacuum is the most pleasant way to spend time.

But my other options were limited to a library I'd already read through,
whatever nonsense the subspace broadcasts were throwing out, or sleep. Under the circumstances, digging through the computer again was at least something I could pretend was work.

So no, I didn't tweak the thing to eleven, nor turn it loose in the Cavern
to hose my systems. Instead, I poured over its code until I found a signature.

Not literally. Just a way of thinking. An imagination that I might have known,
once upon a time.

Mostly, a convention for variable naming. This thing wasn't cowboy programming, someone had taken time to put together a nice little package, built up right and debugged to a fair thee well.

And, they were programming in a style that was pretty distinct. It took me a
while to realize what I might be looking at. But how do I compare it line for
line when I can't take the computer out of isolation?

Come out of isolation, take a shower, eat a sandwich. Do the business required,
nap.

Bring a printer into the isolation chamber with me and feed off a couple
hundred pages of dead tree. Make damned sure that I only printed text,
no hidden graphics here to get picked up by a camera with more logic circuits
than sense.

Then come back out of isolation to settle down for some light reading.

This much at least, I could do in Lemmy's kitchen. The real reason I'd been
careful to make sure of my printing. Last thing I needed was his autoreader
to double up on his dose of badness.

"Hey, Lemmy. Do you still have that test API for those Fed-grade torps we
carried out to the Bevgrada Locus?" Logistics, always logistics. The galactic
military systems were perfectly happy for private contractors to haul their
sundry gear around the stars, so long as the rates were government standard.

Standard practice was to demand a test suite for any electronics gear.
No way was Lemmy going to schlep a couple hundred metric tons of government garbage halfway across the galaxy just to get hosed on delivery after the yard gang didn't give him good gear.

Of course we saved it, regardless of what the contracts said about deleting
it on delivery. Not because he was interested in selling state secrets.

Though, if you're interested in what the government's got, and are willing
to make contact with an appropriate garnishment, please feel free to get in
touch.

No, in this case, comparisons between shipments are what Lemmy's really after.
It being the government, you never know when they're gonna give you a test
suite for "Axle B, slash 12 mark v" and hardware for "Wheel C, slash nought
mark b". If you've got a handy library stashed away, at least you have some
small chance of catching those sorts of stupid little mistakes.

Turns out, it wasn't the code for the torpedoes that I was mis-remembering.

It was the code for a set of environmental satellites we'd dropped off at an
experimental station in the Nlemschtat sector, way back. Maybe the second or
third trip we'd made together.

The satellites were systems probes, meant to jump between a handful of local
systems. General coverage, really, spend some time in orbit around the
handful of planets, jump one neighborhood over. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Something something, intersystem diplomatic relations and general agreements for cooperation, blah blah blah. That was the political side, apparently the sector had little enough land available to be interesting to settlers, just enough biodiversity for the scientists to scratch and claw for their next set of grant funding.

And, oh by the way, it was close enough to the Iuzians for the gKGB-sCIA-fFBI
to open their coffers to the scientists who were willing to piggyback along
on their equipment. Scratch our back, we'll scratch yours, and yes there are
always biologists and agronomists and astroanthropologists with top secret
clearances, don't ask.

So. Someone had either glommed onto that code from somewhere, repurposed it and threw it out to the wild.

Or the gCIA was playing games with the Iuzian's own secret service.

We got a glimpse of which when we finally pulled up to our berth. I opened
the passage for Melba, bottle in one hand, mealworms in the other, only to
be greeted by a robot mechanic, her cart of gear, and a note.

"Hey, Mike. Something came up. Don't worry, I've pre-signed the clearance
(if you've screwed me I'll hang your ass over that unlicensed wormhole you
keep in your cave). Just let Miztlatl do her thing and she'll pass it on to
traffic control, no worries. -Melba. P.S. For reference, Mitzy has a couple
of nice little compartments just big enough for things like a bag of
mealworms, just in case you see her pulling tools from places you don't
expect..."

Huh. "You need anything from me?"

"Not really." Mitzy and Lemmy weren't exactly besties, but she'd been aboard
a time or two for minor repairs. "Is there anything special you'd like to
warn me about before I come aboard?"

"I'm glad to see Melba didn't send you in blind. Best I can tell, if you've
got your scanners set and calibrated to an independent system in the garage,
you should be good."

"That's the way we run things, Mike. You should try it sometime." She and her
cart rolled across the gangway and set about their business.

I gave her the finger when I thought I could get away with it. 'It's not like
we can run home to check ourselves after every trip' I told myself.

"I saw that," she said over her shoulder.

I rolled my eyes and went back to the Cavern with the bottle and the note
to wait out her checkout. "Let me know if you need anything, Mitzy."

"Will do. Now shut up and let me work."

That's not the part that made me realize what we were caught up in. Melba
was usually pretty backed up, putting Mitzy in charge wasn't a surprise.

The surprise came a day later, after I'd sent Mitzy away with goodies for
her and Melba both. Oh by the way, Mitzy enjoys obscure performances of rare
composers. If you're ever in the area and have something like an Alturian
marching band performing Krssat's Sonata for Dancing Across the Stars in C
sharp minor, bring along a copy and tell her Mike sent you.

Anyway, where was I going with this? Oh, that's right, it's what happened
when I finally felt like I could come up for some air. Mitzy'd ok'd our
Cavern systems. My laptop had been corrupted, just like I'd expected, but
whatever the virus's sophistication, it hadn't made the jump from there to
the rest of the gang.

So, I used Mitzy's and Melba's hardware to build ourselves an independent
reference, and then went in to chase down Lemmy's bug.

That was a battle royal, I won't lie. Twists, turns, every time I thought
I had the thing's final hiding spot located, it replicated again and broadcast
itself to another part of Lemmy's internals.

And each and every time I freed up enough resources for Lemmy to join the fun
directly, the damned thing wiped my path out and we had to start the dance
all over again. It's like toddlers wrestling in the mud.

Dirty as hell, fun if you're watching, madness if you're one of the kids and
getting more and more pissed every time the big bully shoves a handful of
dirt in your mouth.

Any road, after having my nose rubbed in it enough, I anticipated the thing.
Its migratory targets weren't quite random, so I laid a trap for it. Plug
a new laptop in, flagged as a visitor's computer exchanging future shipping
schedules and bids with Lemmy, shut off the other avenues, and the virus
hopped over just as pretty as you please.

Just in time for yours truly to drop the silly thing into the vacuum chamber
and bugger off for a beer.

If there's one nice thing about hanging out in harbors, it's that the
bartenders there don't bat an eye when you come in with a rack full of gear,
looking for nothing but a pint and a quiet space in the back to ignore the
noise on the babblebox. I'd brought Melba's stuff along just to make sure
there were no accidental reinfections while Lemmy was triple-checking his
systems.

Nice place, too, if you're into the galactic garbage collector view of the
decorating arts. And I don't mean just the patrons, though from what I could
tell we must have covered half a dozen different originating systems and
evolutionary views on the benefits of alternative biologies. Five o'clock
our shiptime, just before noon local, so a good crowd in amongst
the random stuff that the bartender used to hide the holes in the walls.

I'm not saying I stuck out, but I was the only human present when the Iuzian
consul and his bodyguards walked in. It might have been a coincidence, but
when the big lady marching point for him started heading my way, the hairs
on the back of my neck stuck up and I started getting nervous.

The feeling didn't quite go away when her boss stepped in front of my table.
"Michael Bastra, of the S.S. Lemons and Assorted Fruits?"

Lemmy hated that name.

I'd like to think my reputation proceeded me, but I don't have one
outside of a handful of video games no one plays anymore. "That's me, how
can I help you?" I stood to offer my hand, no sense ignoring the pieties,
but the pair of guards grunted, leaned in, and I found someplace else
to put my hand.

"You will open your ship to our inspection. One of our citizens is missing,
and you were her last known contact."

"Melba's gone? What happened?"

At the same time, Lemmy scrolled a message across my glasses. "Checkout's
complete as best I can tell, Mike. By the time you get here, I should be
good to isolate my systems from them."

Meaning, he'd done what he could under the circumstances. If everything was
good, the Iuzians wouldn't be able to pass along anything worse than what we
were already dealing with. And we were already set up, so long as they didn't
get a hold of the gear I was carrying.

"Melba, as you know her, disappeared last night after her robot retainer
finished inspecting your ship. When the robot returned, Melba's garage was
in disarray sufficient for the robot to inform the local authorities. They
informed my staff, and so I am here. Bring us to your ship, Mr. Bastra."

Threat implied, of course. I sighed, worried about Melba, Lemmy. I looked
at the bartender first.

"Hey, Jack, this gear's good, but I'm gonna have to get back to you for
payment. Is this enough to hold it for me?" I held up a hundred dollar bill.

"Name's George. And that should cover it, so long's you're back here by
closing time."

Ok, so I'm ignorant as to the ways and means that Lrzists use to distinguish between hive mates. Chalk it up to experience, try and hide the fact that I was now blushing enough for my distant ancestors to be embarrassed, march on MacDuff.

I passed over my gear and the bill, then hightailed it for Lemmy's berth,
three large and pissed off Iuzians with diplomatic immunity in tow.

I've had more pleasant walks, what with worrying about where they were going
to hide my body. Or if they'd even bother.

In the end, their inspection was just another variation of what Mitzy did,
except for the part where I had to walk along with them. For some reason,
they didn't want me wandering off without supervision.

I give the lady I'd pigeonholed as just a bodyguard a lot of credit though.
Unlike a number of customs inspectors we've known, she wasn't fooled by the
Cavern. She went through each of its compartments just as thoroughly as she
did the rest of the ship.

Lemmy was beyond impressed. "Remind me not to take any shipments for an Iuzian system, Mike. They'll have everything in your Cavern broadcast to their customs systems by the time they leave."

'You know it buddy', I thought.

It was about the time they'd finished up the dirty work, and we were all making
our way back to the gangway, that I remembered something.

And, for one of the few times in my life, kept the thought to myself rather
than running my mouth. What were the Iuzian officials doing checking in on
Melba? She'd run away from home years ago. So far as she was concerned, she was a New Amsterdam citizen, long removed from the homeworld and their political battles.

Maybe when I caught up with her, I'd need to ask some pointed questions. Once
I got rid of the minders she'd collected.

"Mr. Bastra, your ship contains no evidence of our missing citizen. Before
we leave to continue our investigations, do you have any further information
that is relevant?"

Somebody needed to send the consul some updated police procedurals. That, or
a better translation program. "I spoke to Melba directly some three days ago,
when we were approaching the station. When we arrived, her robot tech was
here to greet us with a note from Melba, but otherwise that's the only
communication I've had from her."

"Please provide the note..." he started to say, but I was already offering it.

No point prolonging the inevitable.

The ambassador read the note first, then passed it to the lady with the gear.
She scanned it, waited for the analysis, then nodded.

The ambassador turned away and left.

I didn't bother with him. "Don't suppose you'd let me know if you have, or
find, any other information? Melba's a friend."

I was shocked. She nodded, wrote down a contact listing on the corner of
Melba's note, tore it off and passed it to me. "You'll want to start at the
garage. We came straight here."

She'd written her name on the bottom of the note. Llanna-Aldip. Llanna, I'd
guess, here in New Amsterdam. Aldip at home.

Then she walked away to follow her boss to the next step in their investigation.

Ok, I'll admit, I enjoyed the view. Sure, I wondered about the teeth and
the claws.

"You'll need a first aid kit on hand, Mike," Lemmy said.

"Yeah, I know." I tried to hide the grin.

"The Iuzian females are known to be rough on their..."

"Lemmy, I know you're trying to help," I stopped him. "But honestly, all
you're doing is making it worse. Especially since I've pulled off
a minor miracle or two today."

"What's that?"

"I managed to get through that whole thing without a yutz joke."

"I'll give you that."

"And second, I think I figured out where your virus load originated."

"That one went by a little fast for me."

First though, I needed to check in on Mitzy.

Oh, and pay off the barkeep.

That chore out of the way, I trundled Melba's gear over to the garage.
Which was about as messed up as the Iuzians had given me to believe. Every
time I'd seen it, order reigned. Tools, gear, computers nicely arranged and
humming their electronic songs to each other. Everything exactly where it
needed to be.

It's sort of disgusting, from the point of view of a part time sysadmin. I
work on the pile system. Seeing someone who took the time to actually
organize their shit has a tendency to remind me of my failings.

The shock when I walked into Melba's space didn't help. Everything that
should have been in a rack was on the floor, most of it in pieces.

"We'll lose a month picking this shit up," Mitzy told me. "And that's with
me working twenty-four seven."

I rolled the gear case she'd left me into the only available space. "Any
blood?"

I hadn't wanted to think about that, so far. But seeing the chaos, the only
thing that mattered now was whether Melba had died in the middle of it.

"No. That much I can guarantee." She pointed over to a table where a handful
of drones rested in formation. They were the kind she'd use to do a biologic
check on a ship space, or look for bodies after a natural disaster.

I'm glad that I wasn't there when Mitzy was using the search gear.

Or, at least, that the gear cabinet she'd left with me wasn't. "Hey Mitzy,
if I said we needed you to meet us a couple a.u.'s out, instead of here in
harbor, what gear would you need to bring with you?"

"That cabinet, plus maybe a few other cases. Depends on how much time you'd
give me to get ready." She turned away to continue clearing up.

And that's when I remembered Melba's note. "Mitzy, can I ask you to come
back to Lemmy's berth and give us a once-over?"

Mitzy may not have the most expressive face in the world, but her body
language certainly conveyed what she thought of me, and my request. "Really?
How much handholding do you two need?"

She grumbled about it, but she packed up a case of gear and slung it over her
back.

I made sure to grab the gear case. "Just so you don't feel like I'm not
grateful or anything."

When we got back, the harbor inspectors were giving Lemmy a hard time. "They feel like lice, crawling all over me," he complained.

"Mitzy's gonna set 'em straight, Lemmy. Don't worry about it." It was my
turn to ignore the finger she flipped me.

While Mitzy was arguing with the yard gang, I carried her gear to the Cavern.

Then I hooked up a see-em hear-em for Lemmy. "Do I want to know why you're
opening up the inner sanctum, Mike?"

"Sure, but it'll have to wait. Just be glad Ambassador Yutz hasn't sold us out to
the customs inspectors yet."

I could hear Lemmy's sigh across the speakers. "You had to go there, didn't
you?"

"There's only so long you can hold in a joke, Lemmy."

Lemmy was busy, with the yard gang and scheduling with his suppliers to get
the cargo offloaded. My job was to make sure that Mitzy didn't head back to
her garage.

Which she wasn't happy about. At all. "What the hell, Mike? I've already been
over Lemmy, twice. And that's about twice too many."

"Here I am, trying to set you up with a nice single guy, good job, good
connections..."

"If you're representative of Lemmy's connections, I'm better off with the
garbage collector that comes by twice a week. At least I know who he hangs
out with on his off time."

"I'd be hurt by that, Mitzy. But honestly, you might just be right. I still
need you to come to the Cavern."

She fought it. "You do remember that Melba's disappeared, right? I have to
be at the garage, just in case the cops find something."

I held up my hands. "Trust me?"

I've never been cussed so much in my life. I'm just glad that she did it in
assembly, that way I could pretend I was too slow to follow.

But I got her there. And then I had to ask her to do something really
odd. First, I dug out the bag of mealworms, and set the gear cart in front
of her. Lemmy's eyes and ears were sitting on my desk, just to Mitzy's left.

"Ok, Mitzy, I need you to take these and hide them." I held out the bag
of candied worms.

She didn't respond, not for a long breath. "I don't have time for your bad
jokes." She'd have left at that point.

But Lemmy came to my rescue. "Miztlatl, I don't think Mike's joking. Not this
time."

She looked from Lemmy's speakers, back to me. "Really? What do you mean, hide? Precisely?"

"You're the one who read the note Melba left. Do I need to tickle you to find
your hidden compartment? I can have Lemmy do it."

"Just turn around." She took the bag from me, and crossed her arms.

I took the hint and turned away. "It's not like..."

"Just shut up."

I guess a girl's gotta have her secrets. Though I did wonder what
she'd tell Lemmy.

Then I heard him squawk. She'd turned his camera off. I could hear something
else shift, plastic crinkle, and then another shift as she reversed whatever
combination of yoga and mechanics she'd needed to open the compartment.

"Right, your rudeness. What now?"

"Wait for it..."

And there it was. The sound of another compartment opening. And a cough, and a complaint.

Melba was hiding in the gear cart.

See, even for a human, Melba's tiny. No bigger than a minute. For a Iuzian,
she's considered a child unworthy of full adult recognition. The cart Mitzy
had loaned to us wasn't much bigger than a double packing case.

But it was big enough to hide Melba, scrunched up like a magician's assistant.

Mitzy gasped when she realized what was happening, then ran around to help
her partner out of the case.

"Mike, what's going on?" I reached over to turn Lemmy's eyes back on. "Oh.
Who's she hiding from, I wonder?"

"You realize we've picked up a passenger."

He thought about it. Which didn't take long. "You believe she was the one who
infected me with the virus."

By this point, Melba was standing. "Yeah, Lemmy. I'm the one who gave you the
virus. I had a feeling I was going to need a ride." She stumbled a bit as
the feeling returned to her legs. With Mitzy's help, she made it over to
one of my chairs.

Which explained the secondary logic of the bug. "If we'd gone to some other
system?"

"One way or another, you were coming to New Amsterdam. There are worse places in the galaxy." She stretched, working out the kinks. "So, how much for a
ride to somewhere else?"

Lemmy was faster than I was. "Does that include the bribes, once your
ambassador informs the customs agents of the contents of Mike's Cavern?"

Then again, he was also the purser. Melba wasn't going to get off cheap.

I got up to leave them to their negotiations, then I remembered something.
"Oh, don't forget Mitzy, you two. Not only do you have to negotiate her
passage..."

"But you've got to convince me exactly why I should be going along with you,"
Mitzy continued.

I tried to hightail it out of there before my sensitive ears could be exposed to
words inappropriate for one of my tender years. But Lemmy wasn't fooled.

"Mike, you're not going to contact a certain lady you just met?"

I stopped at the Cavern door. 'Damn, just about made it.'

"Now, Lemmy, we talked about this."

He chuckled. "Privacy after, no problem. But you can't keep a secret."

A harsh truth.

"What are you two on about?" Melba wanted to know.

"Mike's trying to determine whether he can chat up the lady bodyguard who
accompanied the Iuzian ambassador on his inspection this morning. And he's
just now realizing that he may not be able to keep to himself the knowledge
that we know where you are now."

"No, not Mike? Run his big mouth?" She got up and walked over to me. "But
in this case, I think I can help you out. Just promise me that you won't
contact her until after we're offworld."

Subspace communications are good, but they're not that good. "Um, Melba,
doesn't that sort of miss the point? Unless there's something about Iuzian
biology you're not telling me..."

"Don't worry. I'm sure Llanna will be happy to wait for you to come
back around some time."

"Right, what am I missing now?"

She laughed and turned back to Mitzy and Lemmy. "Llanna's my sister. You're
not her usual type, but I can promise you this. She wouldn't have given you her
contact info if she wasn't intrigued."

I spent the rest of our time on New Amsterdam sober, and confused. The first
because I had to run interference on the yard gang, making sure no one
wandered into the Cavern and passing out bribes where needed.

The second just because I am never going to trust Lemmy again, at least when
it comes to matters of the heart. I'm just about convinced he rigged the whole
thing as revenge for me setting him up with that two-seat go-buggy over in
the Cisler Quadrant...