Halo: First Strike (5 page)

drifted up to him, and he inhaled them deeply.  He said, "Today,

maana, some day for sure  and I'm still trying to understand

what that means to me now.  To be productive, that is fine, but to

come to terms with my own mortality  I think that is better." 

The taboulleh was finished.  It was beautiful; he wanted to rub

his face in it.

#

Not long after he finished eating, a package arrived from

Thailand.  Inside layers of foam and strapping were the memory

modules the Thais had taken.  When he plugged the modules into the

memex, they showed empty:  zeroed, ready to be used again.

Gonzales stood looking at the racked modules in the memex

closet.  I can't fucking believe it, he thought.  In effect, the

audit had been cancelled out.  Whatever data he or anyone else

collected at this point from SenTrax Myanmar would be essentially

useless, Grossback having been given time to cook the data if he

needed to do so.  A fatal indeterminacy had settled on the whole

affair.

Grossback, you bastard, thought Gonzales.  If you arranged

for the Thais to grab these boxes, maybe you are smarter and

meaner than I thought.

"Shit," Gonzales said.

"Is there anything I can do?" the memex asked.

"Nothing I can think of."

#

>From the background of jungle plants and pastel walls and the

signature pieces of curved silver, HeyMex recognized the latest

incarnation of the Beverly Rodeo Hotel's public lounge.  Mister

Jones preferred ostentation, even in simulacra.

HeyMex settled into a sling chair made of bright chrome and

stuffed chocolate-brown leather.  HeyMex wore the usual baggy

pants and jacket of black cotton, a crumpled white linen shirt;

was smooth-faced and had close-cropped hair.

A figure shimmered into being in the chair opposite:  silver

suit and red metal-laced shirt brilliant under lights; black-

framed glasses with dark lenses; greased hair combed straight

back, a little black goatee and moustache.

"Mister Jones," HeyMex said.

The other figure took a long, slow drag off a brown

cigarette.  "HeyMex," it said.  "What can I do for you?"

"It's Gonzales.  Since we got back from Myanmar, he's been

passive, hasn't been taking care of business."

"Post-trauma responsegive him some time, he'll be okay."

"No, he doesn't need time.  He needs work.  Have you got

something?"

"Maybe.  I haven't run a personnel searchhe might not fit

the exact profile."

"Never mind that.  Give it to Gonzales.  He needs it."

"If you say so.  You'll hear something official later today."

The world went translucent, then turned to smoke, and Mister

Jones disappeared back into his identity as Traynor's Advisor,

HeyMex into his as Gonzales's memex.

(Ask yourself why the two machines chose this elaborate

masquerade, or why no one knew these sorts of things were

happening.  However, as to the who? and the why? there can be no

question.  These are the new players, and these are their games.

So welcome to the new millennium.)

4. Privileged Not to Exist

When Gonzales returned home, he found a message from Traynor: 

"Will arrange for transportation tomorrow morning, five a.m., from

Northern Seattle Airtrack to my estate.  Be prepared for immediate

work.  Pack the memex and twenty-two kilos personal luggage."

"Shit," Gonzales said.  "We just got home.  Twenty-two kilos,

huh?  That means we'll be going  where do you think?"

The memex said, "Somewhere in orbit."

#

The airport limo held its spot in a locked sequence of a

dozen vehicles moving away from the city at two hundred kilometers

an hour.  Seattle's northern suburbs showed as patches of light

behind shifting mist and steady-falling rain.  Overhead, cargo

blimps flying toward Vancouver moved through the clouds like great

cold water fish.

Gonzales got a quick view of a square where white and yellow

searchlights played across a concrete landscape, and a gangling

assemblage of pipe and wire stepped crab-wise as it sprayed a

brick wall:  a graffiti robot, a machine built and set loose to

scrawl messages to the world at large.  Gonzales could only read 

GENT OF CHAN

With a sigh from its turbines, the limo slowed to exit into

North Seattle Airtrack, then turned into the private field access

road.  A wire gate opened in front of them as it received the

codes the limo sent.  Near the SenTrax hangar waited a swing-wing

exactly like the one that had taken Gonzales from Pagan to

Bangkok.  Gonzales climbed into the plane, placed his bag and the

memex's shock-cases into the plane's baggage locker, seated

himself, and pulled his shoulder harness tight.

The swing-wing rose into clouds and fog.  After a while, the

blank whiteness out the windows and steady noise of the swing-

wing's engines lulled Gonzales into a light sleep that lasted

until the ascending scream of engine noise told him they were

landing.

As the plane tilted, Gonzales saw the blue sheet of Lake

Tahoe stretching away to the south, then a patch of green lawn on

the water's edge that grew bigger as the swing-wing made its final

pproach to Traynor's estate.

>From his six years' work with Internal Affairs, the past two

as independent auditor, Gonzales knew quite a bit about Frederick

Lewis Traynor, his boss.  Traynor had wealth sufficient for even

the most extravagant tastesit was his family's, and he had known

nothing elsebut power whose smallest touch could shape lives,

imprint stone, that he longed for.  From his position as head of

Internal Affairs, one of SenTrax's most powerful divisions, he

plotted ascent to the SenTrax Board; he wanted to be one of the

twenty people who had moved beyond negotiation and compromise,

whose desires were reality, whims action.

In fact, Traynor had already achieved a level of eminence

that is privileged, when it wishes, not to exist. His house and

land occupied a chunk of the North Shore of Lake Tahoe where there

had once been two casino-hotels and a section of state highway. 

The hotels had been demolished, the highway diverted.  The grounds

were now surrounded by a four-meter high fence of slatted black

steelalarmed, hot-wired, and robot-patrolled.  The estate showed

on no map or record of purchase, ownership or taxation; neither

did the man himself.

When Gonzales stepped out of the plane onto a great expanse

of green lawn, Traynor waited to meet him.  He was short and

pudgy, and his skin was pale.  His sparse hair lay limp in dark

curls on his skull.  On his feet were soft black slippers, and he

wore an embroidered silk robegreen and blue and white and red,

with rearing dragons across back and front.  He thought of himself

as Byroniceccentric and interesting, afflicted by geniusbut to

Gonzales and many others he appeared simply petulant and self-

indulgent.

Traynor stretched his arms wide and said, "Mikhail," giving

the name three syllables, saying it right, then took Gonzales in a

brief hug.  Traynor then stood back and looked at him and said,

"You don't look too bad."

"Is that why you brought me here, to look at me?"

Traynor shrugged.  "For that, maybe, and to talk to you about

your next job.  Besides, I like you."

Gonzales supposed that Traynor did like him, in his peculiar

boss's and rich man's way.  Particularly, he seemed to like the

fact that Gonzales wasn't awed by the outward and visible

manifestations of his money and power.

"Good breeding," Traynor had said to him once.  "That's your

secret:  patrician and plebian blood mixed."  Mikhail

Mikhailovitch Gonzales was of mixed blood indeed; among others,

Russian Jews and Hispanics from Los Angeles on his mother's side,

Blacks from Chicago and Cubans from Miami on his father's.  Among

his family background were slaves and field workers and bourgeois

counter-revolutionaries, along with the odd artist and smuggler

and con man.

However, whatever his breeding or experience, he had to put

up with lots of cheerful, condescending bullshit from Traynor, as

he had to put up with Traynor in general, because the man was rich

and powerful and the boss, and neither of them ever forgot it.

The two walked toward the house that stood facing the lake at

the lawn's far border, a Stately Home an idealized eighteenth-

century English architect might have built for an equally

idealized and indulgent patron.  Off a golden domed center stood

three wings of creamy stone, the whole in restrained neo-Palladian

with no modern excesses of material, no foamed colored concrete

and composites, just the tan and creamy sandstone and rose marble

speaking wealth and taste.

They climbed up marble stairs and passed into the house and

under a looming interior dome that soared high above the central

rotunda where the house's three wings joined.  They walked down a

hallway of dark wainscoting below cream walls and ceiling.

Gonzales caught glimpses of side rooms through open doorways

as they passed.  One room appeared to front upon a night filled

with swirling nebulae and a million stars, the next on sunshine

and dazzling snows.  Still another contained nothing but white

walls, floors of polished marble and a five-meter hand centered

motionless in mid-airindex finger extended, other three fingers

curled against the palm, thumb erect on top like the hammer of a

make-believe gun.

Mahogany doors parted in front of the two men, and they 

passed into the library.  Its dark-paneled walls gave away

nothing:  even close up, the books might have been holo-fronts,

might have been real.  Flat data entry modules were laid into

mahogany side tables that stood next to red leather easy chairs

and maroon velour couches.

"Sit down, Mikhail," Traynor said.

Gonzales could feel the silence heavy and somber among the