Hardgrave left me looking at a clock and I sat there drooling onto my chest for over an hour until the drug wore off. In a spasm of tremors I thrashed on the sofa before my muscles answered my commands.
With pains stabbing every inch of me, I stood and pumped my legs and arms trying to regain sensation. I didn’t waste much time before hurrying to my apartment and my slate. Hardgrave’s brother and sister might have searched for Forge, but they did it without causing a mess. For criminals all three struck me as uncommonly polite.
I called Pamela, but this time instead of a useless message I received a network alert announcing that there was no such person. I double-checked her contact information, but the network again insisted that she had never existed.
A cold chill shot down my back. Something had happened, something very bad. Eddie? Hardgrave? The thought of either man holding her prisoner set my blood boiling. Not worrying about the consequences, I quickly dressed and summoned a car. I was still pulling on my jacket and heading down the theater’s steps when the car arrived.
I climbed into it, setting my destination. The car sped along nearly deserted streets and the ride tested my patience. I ran from the loading ramp into the lobby and to an elevator. As it climbed the tower my heart raced with fear that turned to terror with memories of Eddie’s previous enraged visit overpowering my thoughts. My knees quivered and sweat coated my palms.
The elevator doors opened and I moved carefully down the hallway to Pamela’s door. With an easy push it slid open. I stepped into the dark room, my slate throwing a wide diffuse beam of light as I searched the empty apartment.
Every room, every cupboard, every closet was empty. Nothing looked damaged or overturned, so there hadn’t been a fight, but no Pamela. Eddie slamming his massive fists on my front door would make me move too. She must have dumped her compromised identity and when she was safe she’d contact me. I started to leave when a light on the fabricator caught my eye.
The printer still had power and it didn’t take very long to call up its records. There were the usual sorts of things, dresses and personal items, but also in the inventory was a duplicate Forge. She had printed a duplicate, but one in a ruined and destroyed state.
* * *
Dawn tinted the sky pink and red as I climbed the steps, unlocked the door, and went inside, wondering about Hardgrave’s comments. I went to the office.
I accessed the colonial network, inspecting all my accounts, and at first everything looked all right, but then I noticed a little extra money. Digging deeper, I tried to uncover exactly when and where these funds had appeared. They led me down a rabbit hole of accounts with clumsy and ham-handed attempts at concealing their connections to me. These accounts were fat with money, far more than I had ever seen or accessed, even when I oversaw the theater’s construction. A spiderweb of transactions from all over Nocturnia fed into ‘my’ fake accounts.
Realization dawned like an exploding bomb. Eddie, either with Forge or a second one Pamela didn’t know about, had created these, setting me up for Security. I looked again at the amounts and whistled softly. If he could afford to throw this much away to make sure the Administration burned me instead of him I could only imagine what sort of totals his operation pulled in. No doubt he’d claw some of it back once I was convicted.
I didn’t have much time. Security’s investigation would turn this up as soon as someone looked. I needed Pamela, I needed Forge, and I needed them now. I looked back at those faked and damning accounts. Eddie’s trap was foolproof and I was the fool. Calling Pamela would only be a futile waste of time. She had ditched that identity, but I couldn’t wait for her to turn up. I had to find her, or find Forge.
I wasted hours tearing my hair out. I knew nothing except the location of Eddie’s tower and nothing would drag me in there. No matter how I approached it, I came up empty. Pamela, Eddie, Forge, and Hardgrave: I needed to know how all the elements came together but like a badly edited film it refused to make sense. Hours burned by and carafe after carafe of coffee did nothing to spark my brilliance. It seemed utterly ridiculous to have survived everything like that terrifying night in Eddie’s tower, and yet lose all to Jones and Security.
An idea fluttered at the edges of my thoughts. I sat at my desk and tried to relax, though the massive amounts of caffeine surging through my bloodstream fought me. At Eddie’s tower he watched the movement of every person that came to him, and not just those, but also some from elsewhere.
I grabbed my slate and flipped through its history. Yes! It was still in there. I stared at the map. I saw the desolate spot hundreds of miles north in the island’s rocky and high mountains, the focus of Eddie’s ultimate paranoia. I had no idea what lay there, but desperation and time left me with no options.
* * *
I called Wolfgang, and defying my luck of late, he answered.
“Jason! What the hell is going on?”
He didn’t sound angry, but the worry and concern in his voice carried volumes.
“There’s far too much to tell.”
He ran his fingers through his buzz-cropped red hair. “You can’t leave me in the dark. There’s rumors flying that this isn’t just Jones, but that Security is looking to put you over the wall.”
I sighed. I didn’t want to confirm that for once the rumors were more right than wrong, but I needed him.
“That’s not very far off.”
He fell back in his seat, stunned. “I can’t believe it. I mean, I know what sort of trouble you got into as a teenager, but that’s not the sort of thing they exile people over.”
He leaned forward into the camera. It always astounded me the way people assumed cameras transmitted personal space with their images.
“What the hell did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything! At least I haven’t done what anyone thinks. There are some very bad people, people who can hack the entire colonial network—”
He confidently shook his head. “Can’t be done.”
“The hell it can’t! I’ve seen it!”
“Jason, the network was established by the Founders. It’s not something people are going to hack. There’s simply no way a human intellect can compete with the designs laid out by a fully functional artificial one.”
“Are you going to argue with me or are you going to listen? I tell you they can do this and they are doing it.”
He paused and then asked, “You’re serious about this?”
“Yes, I’ve seen it. This guy’s able to rewrite any database, forge any entry he needs, and now he’s setting me up.”
His expression grew serious. “That’s really bad news. How the hell did you get mixed up in that?”
“A woman.”
I tried not to get angry at his smirk.
“That’s always been your problem, hasn’t it?”
“Well, now it’s a little bigger than that.” I took in a deep breath. “I need your help.”
“What can I do?”
“I need a flyer.”
Wolf sat back, the request surprising him. “A flyer? How is that—?”
“You have to trust me on this. Also I need satellite imagery.”
I tapped at my slate and sent him the location that terrified Eddie.
“A flyer’s not like a car,” Wolf complained. “We don’t have hundreds, just—”
I snapped. “Wolf! I stuck my neck out for you a couple of weeks ago. You begged for me to cross Jones and I did it.”
“No need to throw that in my face.”
“Well, I need that flyer, I need that imagery, and you’re—”
“I didn’t say no. It’s just not that easy.”
He paused, thinking, and then said, “But I can do it. It’ll take a few hours. Do you want it in the morning?”
“I don’t have the time. I’ll take it out tonight.”
“All right, I’ll see you then.”
* * *
The sun dropped toward the horizon, vanishing behind the westward mountains as I arrived at the landing field. I passed hangers, maintenance buildings, and simple offices. The Founders had established a reasonable space capability. Too many critical resources were only obtainable from space, but in terms of commitment from the Governing Council, space ranked low. The Founders had mapped the planet, located and moved into orbit a few valuable asteroids with enough material to satisfy a couple of centuries of unrestricted growth. With those resources already at hand Admin wanted to ignore space, which left true believers like Wolf fighting to keep their ships flying.
The car drove to the more populated area of the field. Here flyers, each boasting four large ducted fans and their own micro-fusion plant, lined the tarmac. As my car approached, Wolf waved from the far end of the line. I stepped out and a wall of noise battered my ears as another flyer landed.
“I’ve got something set up in the old flight office,” he shouted over the roar and led me back to an older building, really nothing more than a shed.
We stepped inside and I closed the door behind us, diminishing the roar somewhat. Wolf waited by a wall display, his slate in his hand.
“It’s kind of noisy in here.”
“When the Founders built this office the field was three kilometers away.”
I shrugged and ignored the noise.
Like all space types, Wolf used a scientific measurement system while the rest of the colony followed our ancestors’ preferences. Truly nothing symbolized the insanity of our cultural ‘preservation’ better than that.
“Here’s the spot you wanted.”
He pointed to the display. Low mountains, jagged broken boulders, and a whole lot of native plants filled the screen. I stepped closer and studied the image of wild, native land and nothing more. No buildings, no roads, nothing, and yet this spot held Eddie’s attention.
“There’s nothing there,” Wolf said, stating the obvious.
“Yeah, that’s how it looks.”
“Still want the flyer?”
I hesitated. What could I possibly gain by going out there? I almost told him no, but I lacked options and even if there was nothing there at least I would be doing something. Something had to be there, something hidden, something that terrified Eddie.
“Yes.”
“Okay.” He did something with his slate and added, “I got you one, but do me a favor and try not to crash it.”
“I thought they flew themselves?”
“Joke.”
“Right now, Wolf, I don’t have a sense of humor.”
We went back outside where operations had stopped for the day, leaving the field quiet. He led me to the closest vehicle, pulled open the cockpit door, and I climbed into the seat.
“It’s like a car,” he said. “You can just punch in a destination, latitude, and longitude, and it’ll take you there. They have to be keyed for access and this one is set up for you.”
“Is there a record?”
“Of course, I listed it as film research. It’ll be on your head to explain that.”
He slammed the door closed and backed off. I identified myself to the flyer’s onboard network and once I set the destination it leapt into the air.
The field fell quickly away as I shot high into the night sky. Nocturnia’s dazzling buildings shrank and quickly vanished behind low mountains until only light reflecting off low clouds indicated the city’s presence. Even that vanished once I broke through the cloud layer and soon I flew over a gray unbroken expanse with the Milky Way sweeping across the sky above me.
I let the automatics fly uninterrupted for 30 minutes and then I inputted new commands. Wolf meant well, but after the last two weeks I decided on caution as my new watchword. I changed my destination. Instead of landing directly at Eddie’s coordinates, I selected a spot two miles south. It would be easier to stay hidden on foot. The next thing I changed was my altitude. Aborting the planned high-altitude flight with a direct descent, I instructed the autopilot to drop under a few hundred feet and follow the contours of the landscape. With a small range of mountains to shield me I hoped I might arrive without anyone being any the wiser.
Satisfied, I leaned the seat back and tried to rest.