An Eighty Percent Solution Part 24

"If you tell me, you can run. It can work."

"And return to living like a Nil?"

"Or I can start torturing you now. I could just kill you outright, but that doesn't get me what I want."

"I can't turn and you know it. Isn't there any way we could make some kind of deal?" Her hands sensuously stretched down her fishnet stockings and back up, lifting her tiny skirt. Tony's gun went off almost before the dull glint of the ballistic plastic barrel came out from underneath her skimpy clothing. Carmine's body reflexively jerked, firing off a single shot as she died, gouging a hole a meter in diameter in the ceiling.

Gregori slammed through the outer door almost in time with the shots. Tony watched as it took several seconds for him to gestalt the room. Finally, the shoulders loosened, and his stance became more dignified and less professional.

"d.a.m.neditalltoh.e.l.l," Tony said all in one breath, idly waving the end of his gun around. As bad as Tony's aim had been, he had put thirteen separate tiny projectiles through her torso. "I thought I could convince her to give up the information. I guess we'll have to try it the hard way. Get the cleaver from the kitchen."

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! You carried that thing all the way from Seattle?" Augustine remonstrated as she stared at the decapitated head lolling around inside Tony's brightly colored bowling bag. As a devout Catholic, she added the murder to the growing pile of sins to confess.

a.s.suming the GAM actually were close to completing their lifelong quest, she might have to finally fulfill her promise to Mary and return to the confessional for the first time since she took up the terrorist mantle. It scared her in a distant way. But, like anything, first things first.

"What if a Metro or TriMet pig decided you looked suspicious?"

"Two normal guys on their way for a bit of bowling after a hard day in the factory?" Tony said. "No Metro would've bothered to stir off their lazy a.s.s."

"Even a random sweep."

"They didn't."

"Obviously. You're still here."

Having done the net raid to get the information, Augustine knew the woman looked somewhat attractive before Tony's ragged job of decapitation.

"Tough-necked b.i.t.c.h. Just like when she was alive. It took six blows with a cleaver and another few more with the butcher knife."

Augustine shrugged. Murder was murder no matter how grisly. She only needed the brain intact. The brutal treatment by her friend bothered her not at all.

"So what can you get from her?" Tony asked.

"About sixty years, if I remember my criminal code correctly. Of course, decapitation might be considered special circ.u.mstances, in which case we're probably looking at life."

"Augustine, I'm not joking around here. What kind of neural reconstruction can you give me?"

"She...it's been dead less than an hour?"

"'Bout seventy minutes," he said after consulting his chronograph.

"Remember that neural reconstructions aren't terribly detailed even when done at death," she cautioned as she draped a fine gossamer net, whose every junction glowed brightly, over the top of the head. "Over an hour? I wouldn't go looking for the magic bullet here, especially as this isn't the Metro Crime a.n.a.lysis Unit."

"Some chance is better than none."

"OK. By the way, Tony, we need to talk about something else."

"Can it wait? Every minute those neural pathways degrade."

"OK, but as soon as I'm done."

Tuan and Gregori both sat stiffly on her sofa, taking care not to recline against the homemade afghans that covered the back. As she worked, Tony paced around her net cradle. At one point Augustine wondered if he'd wear a track in her Berber or accidentally smash into her antique Crate and Barrel coffee table.

While three of her mental tracks sorted the milky and broken images into something usable, one track watched as Tony examined the solidos of her family-five children and eighteen grandchildren at last count, although Millie was pregnant with twins.

Tony frowned at the family reunion solido they took at Mickey's Grove. He waved his hands over the prayer candles lit in front of each picture as if he couldn't believe they were real.

"The last of the images drained out of the skull. Here's what I have." Tony raced back into the stark world of direct wired electronics. "I know you don't care about the techno-babble, but I did manage to arrange the neural memories into a visual image similar to a solido and do a probability fill on those parts that can be deduced from previous or past frames." Augustine typed in the air with her eyes rolled back in her head. "I have to warn you that this is still pretty crude."

The images of the dead woman's memory blossomed into the room around them, magnified significantly. They skipped and shook like a bad memory string.

"I've downloaded everything I could get. As usual, the storage required for such a download in all sensory dimensions is b.l.o.o.d.y huge. I've taken the standard measures of ignoring smell, taste and touch and have focused in on parts you might find relevant, from the first meeting of you two to present."

Tony rubbed his nose like it itched. "You can fast forward through most of that until mid-October, when they betrayed me."

With her right hand, Augustine turned a pseudo-control in the empty air. The former life he sometimes shared with Carmine flew by at a phenomenal rate.

"She kept another lover," Tony said. He reacted less than a computer memory bank to a random datum. Augustine recognized the Wilted Rose.

"Slow down." She once again manipulated her pseudo-controls with her right hand, and the images slowed to only double speed. With her left she synched and engaged the audio.

"Her apartment." Tony said as the speed became really watchable.

Through the images they heard a knock at the door and Carmine went to open it. Tony gaped as a short whipcord man in lemon yellow tights stood in her doorway.

"Carmine Peligran?" the voice squealed. Augustine again dialed down the speed as Carmine's vision nodded in the affirmative. "Did you know your boyfriend has an animal in contravention to the law? And he practiced medicine without a license?"

The picture faded to black but the audio continued. "Come in, please," she said. They heard the door closing but the visual faded into a blurry and milky paste. It cleared enough to discern the slight bodyguard leaned back into a big black armchair.

"We want you to spurn Tony Sammis and we're willing to sszzzrk to do so. I'm sure you'll find solace with your other partner and a wad of credit slips."

"Why?"

"I'm not exactly at liberty to say, although I'll tell you truthfully I do not know."

"OK. I know what you are and who in general you represent." She held up a hand to ward off the protestation. "I don't know specifically, but you've given me enough to guess. You don't ssss about Tony's pet or that he saved one old frump, now do you? .. you? ..you? .. you? .. you?"

Augustine frantically attempted to compensate but the bodyguard's response got covered completely. "Then what are you after?"

"My instructions are that we wish to drive Tony completely out of his ssssurroundings and into the world of unlicensed and unrecorded individuals."

"You want ssssssssssskr a Nil. I grok it." While only seeing it out of her eyes, they could tell she leaned back on her divan like some Egyptian princess. The point of view showed that she rolled her eyes up in her head for a few moments. "I want one hundred eighty thousand a year plus level two medical, three years' minimum."

Augustine actually looked at Tony, but he didn't flinch as he watched his former lover pull a Judas on him.

"Miss, we're looking at a one-time payment of say sssjjjjkrr...his simple act." The video became less blurred and the clarity returned with a vengeance.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't quite explain. You will find me useful in a number of ways. First, given the right funding I'll torpedo Tony in several ways. I know the right people to pull his credit, auction his house, and snub him at all of his hangouts, some of which you may miss. I might even be able to get him arrested."

"No, thank you, miss. We don't wish him arrested, although based on my instructions, all of those other items could have value. Would you be able to reject him so effectively and completely?"

"For one eighty, I sure would. Sure, he was handy. But what is any one man? I can get those by the truckloads."

"Remarkable att.i.tude."

"Then do we have a deal?" she asked, thrusting out her hand to seal the deal.

"As I said, Miss Peligran, I don't have the authorization for such an extravagant change in plans. However, your forthright att.i.tude and embellishment to the request might have some future value to my employer. I will pa.s.s them on."

"But not with your endors.e.m.e.nt."

"That's not my decision. I leave such matters to my employer."

"Very well. When will I hear from this person of substance?"

"Before the day is out, miss. If you will excuse me, I have other arrangements to make."

Augustine snapped up the speed as Carmine spent a good portion of that day pacing around her living room. Tedious to watch. The memories snapped back to normal speed when Carmine's percomm went off.

"Carmine here."

"Miss Carmine," came a smooth baritone voice. Augustine grabbed Tony's eye as they looked at one another at the same time. The educated tones held their own distinction, one familiar to both of them. "Your offer tested my curiosity. I will be honest in saying I'm not often intrigued."

"Tony can be just the first of many a.s.signments I can help you on."

"All right, I agree to your terms. I'll give you a drawing account for each, umm, client I send your way, based on its difficulty. Any of the account you don't spend on the job is yours. I won't offer any additional sum, except in cases of extreme opportunity or a mistake in my judging the difficulty of the case. For Mr. Sammis, I offer an additional fifty thousand. Welcome to the payroll, Miss Peligran."

The rest of Carmine's memories showed nothing they hadn't already determined, although Tony watched Carmine's last moments intently. It was like watching oneself be murdered.

"I don't know if this will sway the rest of the GAM, Tony," Augustine said, snapping off the recording. "It's convincing, but not definitive."

"I know. By the way, you mentioned you wanted to talk to me about something."

Augustine adjusted something on her computer mainframe that didn't need adjusting. Then, for good measure, she wiped off the dust acc.u.mulation. She didn't know how to share what she absolutely had to share.

"Sonya reached a political compromise about the leaders.h.i.+p of the group," she finally managed.

Tony sat down on the arm of the sofa, facing her. There was no rancor in his face. It seemed more tired than anything.

"Not unexpected. Who got the bag?" Augustine c.o.c.ked her head to one side. "Oh, come now. I'm not naive," Tony continued. "After that session yesterday, I knew there was no way to put me in without the efforts you and I just did, a.s.suming they paid off perfectly. They didn't. Even if they had, some of them wouldn't accept it."

"An incredibly astute judgment."

"Worse, I don't even want the farking job."

"Huh? You've been fighting like you wanted it as soon as Sonya announced she was ill."

"Do you want to know why? I personally hate the political in-fighting. The thought of taking the job makes me want to puke. But I made a promise to Sonya. She sees me as some kind of super weapon that will bring her dreams to fruition. Between you and me, though, her dreams of open fields, rainforests, and free-roaming bison is a world of the past. There are too farking many people. We can't wish them away."

Tony's statement almost pulled Augustine from the net completely. She furrowed her brow as she refocused on the six different tracks her net-self worked down. "Then what are we fighting for, Tony? You've always known. I think the rest of us have lost our way. I don't even know anymore."

"Simple. We're fighting for representation. Our government-no, not the one in Was.h.i.+ngton, but the one that really runs things-is an oligarchy. It's a group of people making decisions over the lives of all of us without our input. Everyone in the world knows the corps run things."

Tony, warmed up now, wasn't about to stop. "The United States broke away from the England of several centuries ago for taxation without representation, for the right not to be seized either economically or bodily at the whim of a tyrant. Take what happened to me as an example. The corps decided it. They planned it. They did it. Was I asked? No. Did I do anything wrong? No. They did it to silence the people, the Greenies, from actively protesting their rule.

"But it's a moot point. I doubt I'll ever be the leader unless a good portion of the opposition dies, in which case there's no group anyway. It's never easy to prove what's in one's heart. So who got left holding the bag?"

"I did."

Tony gave her a genuine smile that encompa.s.sed his entire face. "I'm sorry for you, dear."

"I have to admit I didn't expect that reaction."

"Posh. You're my friend. Leaders.h.i.+p is never an easy thing, but I'll help you with it any way I can."

An attention-interrupt:percomm broke up the conversation. "Hold that thought. I have a percomm coming in." Augustine lifted a pseudo-control of an imaginary old-fas.h.i.+oned percomm receiver to her ear.

"Augustine," croaked Sonya. "I need you to link me to the entirety of the members.h.i.+p."

"Hold one." Augustine reached for a pseudo-control of an old rolodex and plucked cards out, pressing them into the percomm. One by one those cards lit up. "Go ahead, Sonya, I've put you on percomm with the entire GAM."

Sonya's voice cracked roughly. "Suet died last night at twenty-three thirty. She died quietly and without any additional pain."

Tony stood abruptly. Snuffling, he paced as tears leaked gently from his eyes.

"Preparations are underway and the ceremony will begin promptly at noon tomorrow."

Tony's legs gave way beneath him and he dropped to the floor in a sitting position. The slow leak turned into a cascade over his cheeks.

Augustine ignored anything else. She unhooked and went down to him, wrapping him in her arms. She thought to comfort him until she realized her own vision also blurred. They sobbed together in one another's arms.

"Few of you knew Suet's burial wishes," Augustine began, dressed in a black floor-length gown with a high neck of white lace. It made a perfect background for the puffy redness of her face and the trail of fresh wetness down the sides of her cheeks.

Tony threw six kinds of fits when Augustine told him part of the political maneuvering required him to remain away from all funerals excepting Sonya's, if that came to pa.s.s. He sat in a tiny room watching everything via solido. Sonya sat in the front row, a bloodstained handkerchief covering her mouth.

"I was one of the few who earned her trust enough for her to share," Augustine continued. "She ran away from her humanity because of the pain it inflicted upon her. She feared moving to her next life forever being the machine even more. She exacted two promises of Sonya and me.

"First, to ensure her body was rehumanized with its original parts. She stored the original ones in cryo for this very purpose. She rests here now as before she became more than human. When I'm done I'd appreciate it if you would all pa.s.s here and say your final farewells to the woman you never quite knew.

"Second, she didn't wish to be shoved into the nearest calorie reclamation bin. She wished to be buried. I know this ancient custom isn't practiced anymore. However, some years ago, Suet purchased this actual plot of land for her ever after. I don't think any of you can imagine the cost involved. Even with our relative riches now, any one of us would be hard-pressed to come up with that amount. She worked twenty long and hard years to come up with the cash.

"I once asked her why she did it. She told me of the peace it gave her, knowing where she'd rest. Knowing that there'd be flowers or gra.s.s or even weeds left of her when she pa.s.sed. So insecure in her place in life, she took comfort in what the next life might bring." Augustine finally faltered. She cleared her throat as she wiped the tears away. With a white linen handkerchief she blew her nose.

"Suet was a solid friend and rock in our sea of constant change. She will be missed."