Angel took the full two hours with the alien. The attempt to pry comprehensible facts out of the creature was exhausting. It didn’t help that she had a constant feeling that, any time after the first fifteen minutes of the conversation, the Fed was going to burst in all over the place and she was going to disappear under a swarm of anonymous Fedboys chanting, “National Security.”
She kept feeling that even as the Sikorsky took her and the academics up over the bay.
Somewhere there was a recording of her conversation with the alien. Somewhere a bored security official was reviewing the interviews with the captive aliens. Sometime soon, that official was going to reach the last interview. Angel knew that, fifteen minutes from then, all hell was going to break lose.
Because, once someone actually looked at the stuff she’d talked to that blob about, that someone was going to call Washington. When they were told who she was—
Her only hope was to get out of the Presidio before that happened.
Information, she’d asked the alien. What kind?
The alien’s long rambling answer took a long time for her to decipher, but she now knew what Byron Dorset carried for a living.
If anything, that knowledge made things worse.
VanDyne dealt in a lot of things before the Fed took it over. The most important “assets” the Race “moved” from VanDyne Industrial were predictions. Very specific predictions.
The Race had stepped a few centuries beyond Steve the sociologist’s sinusoidal curves. With their programs and the monster computer they kept at VanDyne, they could give demographic projections for any political unit you could name. They could have projections up to a decade in advance that came within a few points. They could tell you what the economy would look like, what technical areas would be advancing. They could predict the crime rate, the birthrate—everything from beer sales to the number of Masters of Science Degrees in biological engineering that would be awarded in 2077. But the point wasn’t prediction.
The Race’s programs weren’t passive. They were dynamic. They knew what “variables” to “feed” to achieve a favorable outcome.
In some cases those outcomes were elections.
Every four years, they were presidential elections.
Angel stared out at the sun rising behind Oakland. She had to get out from under the Fed. Even though the security teams controlling Alcatraz only debriefed her to the extent of making sure that she wasn’t smuggling out some record of the interview, somewhere—maybe right now—there’d be a review of whatever record the Fed made of her interview.
The magnitude of what Byron had been doing made Angel shudder.
The ramcards she was carrying were a step-by-step formula for a candidate to win the 2060 American presidential election. The way the aliens worked, it was possible, in fact it was likely, that the current head of state, President Merideth, had been a VanDyne client during his last run.
This was heavy shit.
Worse, she could see evidence of it in the current race. Not since the first few decades of the century had there been such a chaotic grab for the presidency. For decades it had been the Democrats and the Constitutionalists and the occasional independent.
This year, candidates were coming out of the woodwork to challenge President Merideth. Third parties—Libertarians, Greens, the NOA party—were actually getting percentages and major vid attention. Even the Republicans were making noises about running a candidate for the first time since the party collapsed in ’04.
Maybe the chaos was because this was the first election in six decades that wasn’t running according to a program.
It was becoming obvious that President Merideth had a much clearer picture of the “alien threat” than he was letting on in his media crusade. Perhaps it wasn’t a coincidence that the takeover of VanDyne followed so close on the heels of the incident at the Nyogi tower. The aliens became public in January, and within a month VanDyne was captured.
Angel could picture the scene. The government clamps down on the aliens infecting Nyogi, very very publicly. The aliens running VanDyne get nervous and try to use their Holy Grail as a bargaining chip in an election year. It was a decent threat—lay off our people or someone else gets your job.
Merideth was in a bind. The aliens had been blown all over the media. He wouldn’t have known the nature of the beings running VanDyne until then. Suddenly he was being blackmailed by creatures who didn’t have the best interests of the country at heart.
So, to keep his relation with these things secret, and to keep the data out of the hands of his opponents, he stomps VanDyne.
Unfortunately, for all concerned, he stomps it a little late.
Byron was left stranded with the info when VanDyne was raided. The information was already out there and the memory of the big brain at VanDyne was scragged.
What does Byron do?
Angel shook her head. Byron got greedy, that’s what he did. Back in February he could have sold the info to whoever VanDyne had slated to get it—probably Alexander Gregg, the Constitutionalist front-runner—and pocketed the whole shebang.
But no, he waited for the field to get muddy out there. There were a dozen credible candidates out there now, with little sign of winnowing a year before the election. It was anarchy at the polls—and Byron tried to auction off the election.
No wonder he got creamed.
That being the case, now what?
She could ditch the cards, wipe them, scrag the data, and let this laughable excuse for democracy continue without outside interference. That might score some spiritual victory, but it would probably get her furry hide nailed to a wall. No one would believe that she’d erased the stuff, least of all the Knights and whoever they worked for—they’d already gotten one blank set of tickets. They would strip her apart until she told them where the real set was. The moreaus would probably just kill her out of frustration.
Not only that, but she’d lost that option when Mr. K copied the data. Whatever she did with the Earthquakes’ tickets in her pocket—the data was still out there.
At least none of the players knew that. Angel hoped they all assumed the encryption would keep her from copying the data. She hoped none of them knew about Mr. K.
No. Everybody believed she had the only set of this crap. So, the only way she had to get out from under this was to consummate the deal with somebody. If the players after her knew the deal was done, they might give up on trying to trash her ass.
She had to sell the shit or she was going to become very dead. She had to hand off this hot potato, and get the hell out of San Francisco.
To whom, though?
Not to the Knights—ever. Not the moreaus either. They were the ones that offed Byron in the first place. Merideth? That was a possibility, but she was afraid right now of being swallowed up in the name of national security. She doubted she could arrange anything with the Fed without quietly disappearing off the face of the Earth afterward.
So what was she going to do?
She pulled out the tickets and watched them glint in the dawn light streaming through the Sikorsky’s window. Rainbows shot by the holographic Earthquakes’ logo. Again, she damned Byron for handing these off to her. She wondered if the data had always been disguised as these tickets, or if Byron was just playing on her love of the game.
“The Denver game,” Angel whispered to herself.
“Tonight, isn’t it?” said her neighbor, Steve the sociologist, without looking up from the keyboard in his lap.
“Four p.m. November 16, Hunterdome—”
She had called one set of people the folks from Denver because she figured that Byron had set a meet for that game. Whoever the Denver folks were, they were high up on her list because they hadn’t yet managed to stomp her or someone close to her.
It gave her a chance.
Besides, she wanted to see the damn game.
She watched the mutilated golf course grow beneath the Sikorsky. She almost expected a ring of army officers, marines, or cops around the landing area. Something was going to blow—she could feel it.
But nothing seemed amiss at the impromptu air base. She couldn’t see anything wrong in the ranks of Sikorskys, air-cranes, and the dozens of aircars. None of the numerous people wandering around below her seemed to be giving much attention to the landing helicopter. As their copter made a turn to approach the landing area, her gaze passed over temporary buildings, warehouses, the gravel lot where she had been directed to park.
She only got a glimpse of the parking lot.
“Excuse me,” she said to the sociologist as she stepped over him. She bolted to the other side of the helicopter, feeling the first stirrings of panic. The other side of the helicopter had come about, and now had the parking lot barely in view. Even at a very skewed angle, she could see it.
What the fuck was Byron’s BMW doing here?
A lot of the academics had turned to look at her. The sociologist character was telling her she better strap in for the landing.
The BMW meant those moreaus were here. Not on the base—the parking lot was outside the secure perimeter—but somewhere nearby. There were four of them, moreaus, combat strains. They were capable of taking out a fox trained in counterterrorist tactics unarmed.
They probably weren’t unarmed now.
Four against one, and all she was armed with was an empty briefcase.
Dust blew by the windows as the Sikorsky landed. There was a thump that almost knocked her over, and the copter was on the ground. She had been gripping the chair so tightly that it hurt her knuckles to let go.
The rotors slowed and came to a stop. She stayed by the windows as the doors opened and the passengers began offloading. Where were they?
She backed away from the window, toward the door. She had no idea what to do. What if they were on the base? What if they were Fed?
The gaggle of academics preceded her out into the landing area. According to what she understood about the procedure, a bus would show up, take them to an office out on the base for the final bureaucratic processing before they got sent back to MIT or whatever. The group clustered by the edge of the landing field, waiting for the transport. Most of the uniformed people were back by the Sikorsky. Angel’s group rated one plainclothes Fedboy who stood out on the road and looked at his watch a lot.
“The transport will be here in a few moments, gentlemen.” He didn’t look at them as he said it. However, the smell of his irritation slipped to Angel. She didn’t mind the delay. She needed time to think.
She turned in a slow circle, looking at the airfield. Her view passed prefab buildings and helicopters, the ocean and the Golden Gate, and white fog hugging the bay beyond the body of the army base. She thought of making a run for it right then. But there was nothing around the airfield except muddy hillocks and earth-moving vehicles for maybe half a klick in every direction but one—and in that direction was the parking lot where the BMW was. The army boys would catch up with her somewhere out in the mud, and then she’d have to do a lot of explaining.
If the moreaus were Fed, or if the Fed was after her at all, it was obvious that the bureaucracy around Alcatraz and the aliens weren’t in on it—yet. There might not be some general alert on her, but all it would take was one bright yahoo on the comm to DC and she’d be in deep shit.
“Don’t kid yourself,” she muttered, “you’re in deep shit right now.”
“The bus is coming,” said the Fedboy, looking at his watch one last time and stepping out of the road.
Angel watched the bus approach. No, she wouldn’t bolt and attract attention to herself. She’d go through the bureaucratic red tape at the office, then she’d disappear. She could jump out a bathroom window or something and make it to the edge of the base on foot. Leave her car in the lot, she could call a cab when she was out on the street.
The bus—a chartered Greyhound that was way too big for the number of people—pulled to a stop in front of the collection of academics. The doors slid open and Fedboy stepped in, waving the bunch into the back. As was the case on the copter, she was the last on board.
She was primed for something to go bad, so when she took one step into the bus she picked up the smell immediately.
“Oh, shit!” She turned to bolt out of the bus, and slammed into the already closing door.
Fedboy took a step toward her. “What?”
She turned back into the bus. The smell was like a dagger into her sinuses. She wanted to yell at the pink; how could he miss it? How could anyone miss it? The driver was on the verge of a panic attack, and over that was animal musk—canine and feline. The heavy smell of an animal on the verge of a kill.
As she turned, she saw a well-concealed arm emerge from the luggage rack above the seat directly behind Fedboy.
“Behind you!” she yelled at him. Too late.
Be the time Fedboy had turned around, the whole creature had vaulted from the luggage rack behind him. He was a canine—no, lupine—moreau, the most savage looking one Angel had ever seen. Lupus stood a full head taller than Fedboy, the top of his head brushing the roof of the bus.
Fedboy reached for his gun.
Lupus backhanded him.
Angel heard the crack as Fedboy’s head did a quick 120 degree turn. Blood spattered the window on the far side of the bus from a massive wound on the side of Fedboy’s face. He stumbled to his knees in front of Lupus. The wolf raised its arm and brought it straight down on Fedboy’s skull.
Fedboy slammed into the aisle between the seats, made one spastic jerk, and was still.
His gun had never left the holster.
Human reaction times were much too slow to deal with a combat-trained moreau. The dozen academics were just beginning to realize something was wrong when Fedboy nose-dived into the rubber anti-skid tracking lining the aisle in the bus. As they turned to see a two-meter-plus wolf snarling over the carcass of the late Fed babysitter, two more moreys popped out from behind seats in the rear of the bus. Angel could barely see them from her vantage point on the steps by the door, but she heard the weapons cock.
From the back she could hear a familiar feline voice. “No one moves, no one breathes, no one says a goddamned thing.”
The same cat that’d hijacked her BMW.
She looked up at the driver, and she took in all the things Fedboy had missed—the sweat, the overpowering smell of human fear, and the cat. As Lupus growled over Fedboy’s corpse, a feline moreau uncurled herself from around the base of the driver’s seat.
The feline’s motion was silent, fluid. She arose out of a space much too small for her, as if she was something insubstantial. Angel saw the driver shaking as the spectral cat slipped out from underneath him. “Drive,” she said.
There was a sickening lurch as the bus jerked forward.
Angel started to get up from her sprawled position by the door. The cat saw her. Angel suddenly found herself looking down the barrel of an automatic pistol. The cat was shaking her head. “You, of all people, should know better than to move.”
The cat almost purred as she said it. Her tail did a slow oscillation as if it didn’t make any difference to her if she had to vent the rabbit.
Angel sank back, with her back to the door. “You don’t expect to get off the base, do you?”
Noises were coming from the rear of the bus, but she couldn’t see that section anymore. Lupus had walked out of her line of sight, and it sounded like he was shoving people into the seats.
The female cat—for the life of her, Angel couldn’t place the species—kept the gun trained on her and one clawed hand by the driver’s neck. “In half a minute this bus will be very low on the priority list.”
There was the sound of a distant roar, like thunder. Then a rattling sound like multiple gunshots and the sound of a cannon firing. The slice of blue Angel could see out the windows became smudged with black.
Sirens began sounding in the distance.
“What the hell—”
The cat produced a rather convincing smile. “The base is under attack, what else?”
The edge of a sign passed in front of one of the windows—they were heading for the Golden Gate bridge.
“Who are you people? What are you people?”
“Patriots, Lopez. That’s who we are.”
It felt like the bus was accelerating. Angel wished she could see where they were going.
“If you knew the full story, Lopez, you’d come with us willingly.”
Fucking-a right she would. Go on, Angel thought, tell me another one. “While you’re scragging people left and right? Yeah, real willing.”
Faster than she thought possible, the cat had crouched over and jammed the pistol under her jaw. “Shut. Up.” The cat spat the words.
God damn it, what was she? Angel stared into those leonine eyes and tried to think what country had produced this.
“Shut up and listen,” the cat said in a purring whisper. “Unlike you, we never stopped serving the country that birthed us. And you’re going to help us save it.”
Angel stared into the feline’s eyes and began to make the connection. “UABT,” she whispered.
United American Bio-Technologies was the company the government seized for violating the constitutional ban on macro gene-engineering. The Fed wasn’t supposed to be involved in the kind of experiments that produced moreaus. Engineering, especially on sentients, was very very illegal in the United States.
But the cougar eyes Angel was looking at right now, as well as the Canis Lupus that had scragged the Fedboy were both very very American. These moreys were Fed. And whatever project had produced them was very black indeed.
The cat seemed pleased with Angel’s realization. “All we want is the information. Tell us where it is and this will all be over.”
What the fuck could she do? She was backed into a corner, gun at her throat, back to the . . .
Angel shrank into the stairwell, wedging herself in as small a space as possible. Her feet were flat against the front of the first step. If it wasn’t for that damn gun in her neck. “Don’t be a fool like that vulpine bastard. Tell us.”
Angel glanced up at the driver. He was sweating, and he kept glancing down toward the two of them. The bus was slowing and she could smell the fear building in the man.
Then Angel saw her briefcase, where she’d dropped it. It was by the feet of the dead Fedboy. “The briefcase, in the briefcase.”
If the cougar would just stand up and get the case.
No such luck. She didn’t even take her eyes off Angel as she called, “Ironwalker!”
Lupus came back into Angel’s line of sight, stepped over the corpse of Fedboy, and picked up the briefcase. Oh, well, Angel thought, it had been a good try.
The brakes hissed and the bus slowed to a stop.
The cougar stood bolt upright, turned, and leveled the gun on the driver. “Why are we stopped?”
Angel didn’t need more of an excuse. She pushed as hard as she could with her legs, and the door gave behind her.