An Eighty Percent Solution Part 18

"So why chew with him?"

"Well, he tipped his hand with this message," Tony answered excitedly. "He gave us info we didn't have before. He knows we've infiltrated his nets and he knows the people they're nilling are coming into our fold. And, perhaps even more interesting, he's contacting us in a clandestine manner."

"True. Hadn't thought of it that way."

"If you don't mind, Sonya," Tony said, waiting for her nodded approval. "Well, let's take each option in turn. Option one: We have him on the run and he wants to negotiate. If he is, he knows he has to offer something sweet to make us lay off. I think we'd be foolish not to at least listen to an offer."

"Yeah, righ'. We ge' more from him than we're sucking up now!"

"Agreed. Option two: We have him on the run and he wants to buy time. Again, I think there's no loss in listening. If it's a ploy for a stall, we can always ignore it."

"And we can shove it up his a.r.s.e if it's shonky."

"Times two on that comment," Colin added.

"OK, OK. Option three: It's a trap. I think ninety percent of avoiding any trap is knowing it's there in the first place."

"And then we can shove it up his a.r.s.e."

"Goes 'ouble for me."

"OK, Suet, I think we understand your sentiments," Sonya said.

"What about risks?" Jackson offered, almost as if scripted.

"Well, if we decide to go through with it, we can limit the damage by isolating the person making contact. Take one of the new recruits and limit their knowledge of our organization even further."

"Agreed, but then we'd limit our ability to have a dialogue."

"Not necessarily," Linc offered from his professional knowledge. "Have that someone, a cutout, physically tie two phones together receiver to transmitter. The person would only be needed to dial the number and put the phones together. Additionally, we could also use multiple cutouts before the call goes through. It's such an old dodge I don't think anyone would think of it."

"Yes, and I'm certain Augustine could monitor a trace. Even if successful, the manual percomm links would deny anything but a signal to process for comparison on other lines."

Now Sonya took her time thinking. "Any other risks?"

"We could put everyone on watch duty to make sure if someone does show up we have time to escape," Jonah offered.

"Well, then I call for a vote," Sonya said. "All opposed?" No hands showed. "I guess just as a formality...all in favor?" Everyone thrust up their hand.

"Carried. The call time is set for tonight."

"Tonight?"

"Better sooner than later. Set it up. Jonah, you set up security. Linc you handle the cutouts. Tony will be our voice."

At one time in her early youth, Sonya learned to isolate a single nerve in her body and heighten or deaden its input, a survival trait. She sat in a lotus, nude, in the center of her meditation room with her eyes rolled up in her head. She searched inside her body for groups of nerves to deaden to attenuate the pain. Her head throbbed in a way she couldn't seem to control.

One by one she turned off the nerve endings until she couldn't feel anything of the outside world, but the pain remained. Many years ago her mother had taught her how to encapsulate illnesses and since then she'd never been sick, but she remembered some of those feelings-the loss of control, the pain and the lack of well-being, just like her body's responses now.

She turned her sight inward. For a brief moment she just relaxed and rode on the flow of her bloodstream, trying to adjust her senses to her new state. The pulsing motion, timed with each pump of her heart, started to make her nauseous. She contemptuously turned off those neural inputs, an oversight and lack of focus.

It took several more seconds before she got her bearings and realized she now navigated through her kidneys. Everything looked in exceptional health. She flowed along out of the kidney. Ahead she sensed a foulness. As she floated further down, the blood pathway became clouded with necrotic cells, obscuring her vision. As she rolled into the liver, lesions spotted across its width, with entire branches clogged in an all-out war between her body's immune system and the cause of the damage.

Breaking her consciousness from the easy flow of the bloodstream she fought through tissue to worm deeper into the liver. She stopped next in one of the more virulent patches, visibly expanding before her. Healthy tissue and body defenses fought a losing battle as the invaders left naught but the dead and dying in their wake. She'd never seen anything move so quickly.

Sonya encapsulated the infectious patch in a gossamer bag, allowing new defenders to rush to the defense. In the past this gave her body the ability to not only defeat the disease but to learn from it and become protected for the next time, just as a body is supposed to learn. But this time she watched the new defenders die just as fast and her isolation expand like a balloon continuing to be inflated. The rate of expansion slowed to a crawl compared to its previous rampage, but it continued. Sonya put more of her personal strength into the enclosure. Still it expanded. She poured even more power into it. Still it expanded.

For the first time in many, many years, fear touched Sonya's mind.

Adjust Plan Over the next hour, at a cost of hundreds of thousands of civilians, a single pony nuke or cyphod chemical bomb could've destroyed up to ninety-five percent of the GAM members.h.i.+p. They lounged inconspicuously in doorways, drank coffee in terrace bistros, drove lift-trucks in racetracks around city blocks, and even patrolled the street level. Not one felt comfortable in their role as lookout. Every one of them nursed second thoughts and fears about this mission. Each one put every other thought and effort into watching for the precursors of a trap. Reports from them all came into Augustine's neural net, every one of them comfortably negative.

"All clear, Tony. Make the call."

Pus.h.i.+ng one single b.u.t.ton engaged the complex network of blind percomm connections and duplicitous network jockeying. In an age of crystal clear audio connections, this one scratched and crackled with odd noises.

"It's your nickel," Tony said. While the elaborate system synthesized his voice, no one had any illusion that it couldn't be broken. They all agreed Tony should act as the GAM voice in this meeting. Only Tony and Augustine sat in presence even with all the precautions they had taken.

"What the h.e.l.l's a nickel?" wondered the voice on the other end of the line.

"A historical unit of currency. Ancient slang for 'you initiated the call, so get on with it.'" Tony looked at Augustine, who shook her head. No tracing attempts. .h.i.t the line or any intermediate connection.

"True. Thank you for your contact. I know the risk you are taking. My people have a.s.sured me that you are not tracing the line and I'm sure you have done the same."

"So we have the minimum amount of trust. Trace or no, we won't stay on line long. Spill it."

"Very well. I propose that you call off your attacks on Nanogate and its affiliates."

"Getting that close to shutting your doors?" Tony immediately regretted the jibe. It might limit his opponent's candor.

"Frankly, yes. Call me a survivor if you wish, but I'd like to go on surviving." Everyone listening, in person and remotely, took a brief pause at the admission.

"Well, we aren't going to just stop. Nanogate is a legitimate target in our eyes. What are you offering in return?"

"A new target."

"We've got hundreds of juicy targets."

"Not with inside information, you don't, no matter how good a wire jock you have."

"What specifically are you offering?"

"I will provide you detailed information that will allow you to take this attack to one of the other major conglomerates. This information will include areas of sensitivity, detailed intelligence, and aid in obtaining even more information to make your attacks safer and more pointed."

Tony's mouth gaped. "How do we know you aren't setting us up?" he counterpunched weakly.

"You don't. What a.s.surances will you give me that you won't attack both firms under my care and these others?"

"You have a valid point. If we agree, what's the next step you propose?"

"I propose three future meetings that will provide you with the information I've promised. Each time I will provide more sensitive information, a.s.suming I see the aggression against my companies cease."

"Agreed," Tony said, not even looking to his compatriots.

"We need a secure method of communication for these three meetings."

Without prompting, Augustine scribbled a notation on a piece of paper and handed it to Tony, who read and processed the information swiftly. "We'll each send the other a two-gig encryption key for each meeting. By using both keys in alternation, we can limit the attack to brute force only. The keys are to be hand generated. No computer-not even an isolated system-is to be involved. Send your three keys to General Delivery in Tucson, Arizona, in care of Jefferson Thomas."

"Agreed. You send your key to William Wenner, 1456 South Oscar Road, Beach City, Oregon."

"Our next call will be exactly four days from now at this same time. We will refrain from any attacks during that period."

"Thank you."

"I won't say 'You're welcome.'"

"I wouldn't expect it."

Not for the first time, Mr. Marks dressed in something other than his yellow tights. This time he wore professional overalls bearing the logo of Volt Electrical. Marks hummed off key as the Taste Dynamics security guard examined the work order Marks had fabricated just ten minutes before.

"Everything looks in place. Do you need an escort?"

"Only if you want to give me one. I've been here often enough they gave me my own key," he lied easily. "Seems your plumbing contractor screwed up the power lines again."

"OK. Report back here before you leave."

"No problem. Short job. I'll be out in an hour."

Mr. Marks walked along his memorized route to a janitorial door. Using the electronic key he had brandished earlier, the door opened to his touch. He calmly opened his bag and placed a thirty thousand gauss electromagnetic lock on the door to ensure his privacy. He extracted from his kit a fifty-centimeter, black-plastic stick. Flipping it open, once in each direction, he tripled its length. Expertly, he pulled it open, one section at a time. Each length popped up a perpendicular stick twenty centimeters long, each one on opposite sides of the pole from the previous. Once done, he leaned it against the wall, making a very serviceable ladder. Removing a laser saw from his pouch, he climbed up and began cutting a hole in the wall very near the ceiling.

Seven minutes later he took a visual network tester and played it over the grouping of cables he had just exposed. It took thirty-three minutes to identify the right cables. Selecting that one pair, he released them from the bundle, routed them out to a separate and exposed plastic trough, and then returned the remainder to their original resting place. With stolen Taste Dynamics sealing tape, he marked the hole he'd cut and the plastic trough, making it seem part of an official change and approved by security.

After sixteen minutes of miscellaneous cleanup and removal of the protective magnet, he dropped the last of his tools in his bag. Eight minutes later he walked out the gate with a wave to the guard, duty for another day accomplished.

"I therefore call this meeting to a close. Thank you all." Sonya nodded as they stood to depart. "Tony, would you mind following me back home?"

Tony's mind went immediately into overdrive. He'd never been asked to Sonya's home. To the best of his knowledge, no one had. She'd been kind, but never really friendly, nor did she ever seem s.e.xually attracted. Anything she said to him normally would be said in front of the entire council. Why the change? At least eleven people looked at him with that same question in their eyes.

"Sure," his voice betraying just a tiny bit of confusion. When Sonya turned, Tony shrugged at the a.s.semblage.

He followed her out to the slum of street level. She glided along the streets illuminated by the occasionally functioning streetlamp. Without moving in anything but a straight line, she seemed to dance amongst the fog and early evening darkness like a ghost, totally at one with the environs. Fearlessly, she walked past street level gangs and bands of whelps who routinely dismembered their victims for their two-credit implants. Less than a few weeks ago, terror would've overcome Tony at even the thought of escorting a young woman on a Portland street, other than those specifically patrolled and kept relatively safe for the nightclubs. Instead, he strode comfortably at Sonya's side.

While Tony tried to determine, unsuccessfully, if they were unnoticed or respected enough to be left alone, Sonya suddenly leapt high enough to chin her way up a rusted fire escape ladder four meters above the ground. It creaked ominously as she scrambled up arm over arm. Tony eyed the lowest rung. Sonya's panther-like jump outstripped his capabilities. Without undue stress he climbed up on a nearby blue dumpster, freckled with the ever-present corrosion of the Pacific Northwest, and with only a tiny jump managed the ladder. He unconsciously wiped the rust from his hand on his pants before entering through the window of her fifth floor apartment.

For their enterprise, fifth floor approached perfection-too low for anything but street sc.u.m, but high enough to keep out all but the most ambitious of the Nils and breakers. Tony wrinkled his nose at a pervasive musty smell. The single piece of furniture, an ancient leather sofa, held at least seven cats and four dogs. The heavily stained carpet held at least twice that number. Two of the cats came up to strop his legs. One of the small dogs chose that time to bark, but only a single yip broke his throat. Several of them came over to beg attention from Sonya, who managed to pet each of them and croon something Tony couldn't hear.

Despite the menagerie, Tony worried on that one-word question like a bit of steak caught between his molars. Why?

Instead of asking, he made idle conversation. "Nice security. Would they lick the invader to death?"

"Despite all appearances, they'd protect this home fiercely. That you're with me, and that you're an empathic person, makes all the difference."

"Empathic? Me?"

"Yes, even if you don't understand why you feel uneasy around some people and warm in the glow of others. Yes. Now come this way." She invited him into a kitchen strewn about with equipment of various missions, past and present. Oddly, the animals stopped at the doorway as if barred by an invisible door. They didn't invade the kitchen like they'd taken over the living room.

"I didn't bring you here for that discussion, however." She shoved out a padded chair with its stuffing peeking through the cracked vinyl for Tony. As he sat, she pushed away the parts on the table, many of which crashed to the floor, and a.s.sumed her customary lotus on the surface.

"You have to be overflowing with curiosity. Let me just begin by saying that I've not brought you here on a whim. You've become more than just another member of my organization, but really my right hand in planning and intentions. With fourteen extremely successful personal missions under your belt and the planning of many, many more, you've earned not only my trust but that of the entirety of the GAM. You know nearly everything I know about our organization. I need to bounce a couple of items off of you. Items that have me concerned."

Tony had learned the hard way that concern from the stoical Sonya usually meant a cosmic disaster. To have several such concerns meant nothing less than the end of the world. "Why not bring them up in council?"

"I didn't feel comfortable discussing such things publicly. Morale is a fragile thing. It's been so long since we've had any, I want to keep it going and not risk fracturing it."

"Sounds serious."

"Perhaps. Let me start with the most obvious. Did you notice that we had three members missing tonight?"

"Yes. I sent Linc home yesterday. Must have the flu."

"Hmm. I don't believe it's any form of influenza. He's running four degrees of fever. The other two are worse, with all the signs of dysentery."

"How did they get that? In this modern era? We don't have contaminated water. Even most of the barrios have good water here in Portland."

"They don't have dysentery. They have the symptoms. Each of the other two has been running at both ends for three days."

"OK, so we have a bug running around. Even those with full medical don't have a cure for the common cold."

"I agree, but I have a strong reason to believe that this isn't any common bug. You see, I have it as well."

"What?"

"Yes. I've had it for two days. You needn't worry. I've isolated my body with...well, you'd probably call it a spell."

"I hate to sidetrack you, but that's a question I've had hovering. I've seen you do some very slick things."

Sonya didn't hesitate. She must've antic.i.p.ated the question. "My mother was a witch and her mother before her. For all I know, probably her mother before that. Just let it be said that I have certain abilities that are mostly personal or informational in nature."

"Can you elaborate?"

"I could teach it, but the training usually starts in infancy. Just say that I've usually got an ace up my sleeve in many situations that most won't understand nor comprehend."

"OK, but that still doesn't explain..."